Julia Bell will be teaching three masterclasses with us this summer, and here you can purchase all three at a discount. Each masterclass costs £30, by clicking the link below you can purchase all three for £75.
MASTERCLASS 1: PAYING ATTENTION – 23rd May, 2026 – THIS MASTERCLASS HAS PASSED – if you would like the recording, please get in touch: info@londonlitlab.co.uk
What does it mean to really look at the world and at the people around us? This session explores attention as the foundational creative skill: how to slow down, observe more precisely, and move from the habitual to the surprising. Drawing on Simone Weil’s philosophy of attention and exercises in close reading and observational writing, we’ll work on the quality of noticing that underpins all good writing.
MASTERCLASS 2: FINDING YOUR VOICE – 30th May, 2026
Voice is often talked about as a mystery – something you either have or you don’t. This session argues that voice is not a gift but a practice: it emerges from specificity, from the courage to write from your own embodied experience, and from understanding the difference between what only you can say and what any text could say. We’ll use reading and writing exercises to locate and develop each writer’s most distinctive register.
MASTERCLASS 3: THE WORKSHOP AS COMMUNITY – 20th June, 2026
Writing is often imagined as a solitary act – but the best writing is shaped by conversation, response, and collective intelligence. This session explores how to give and receive feedback generously and usefully, how to read each other’s work with care and precision, and how a writing community can become a space of genuine creative growth. We’ll workshop pieces in progress and explore what it means to be a generous reader as well as a developing writer.
There is reading in advance of all three masterclasses:
For Masterclass 1
Simone Weil – Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies
Virginia Woolf – Street Haunting
Annie Dillard – Seeing
For Masterclass 2
George Orwell – Why I Write
Joan Didion – Why I Write
Hubert Selby Jnr – Why I Write (Introduction to Last Exit to Brooklyn)
For Masterclass 3
Audre Lorde – Poetry is Not a Luxury
Toni Morrison – The Site of Memory
All these essays will be available to you in your confirmation email.
To take part in these live Zoom masterclasses, you will need access to the internet at the time and date shown, and be able to receive a joining link by email. This will be sent in your confirmation email alongside the reading materials. Please check your spam if you don’t receive this.
Tickets
This event will be recorded for the purpose of sending to ticket holders who can’t make the event, and those who require the recording to meet their access needs. Tickets purchased after the event takes place will be given access to the session recording for ten days after the session.
You can purchase an individual £30 ticket for this event, or this combination ticket for £75, which includes all Julia’s sessions in this series:
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- 23rd May | Between the Lines: Paying Attention | £30 – THIS MASTERCLASS HAS PASSED – if you would like the recording, please get in touch: info@londonlitlab.co.uk
- 30th May | Between the Lines: Finding Your Voice | £30
- 20th June | Between the Lines: Writing Workshop as Community | £30
If you do not receive an invitation link, or if you have any other questions, please contact us at info@londonlitlab.co.uk
