Our Future Storytellers: A Creative and Critical Writing Course

By Amirah Mohiddin

 

Over the past two years, I’ve worked as a tutor on several placements with The Brilliant Club, an organisation devoted to supporting less advantaged students to access higher education. More specifically, I have taught on The Scholars Programme, a programme designed for PhD students to share their subject knowledge to a small group of students to help them develop key skills, gain knowledge and the confidence to pursue higher education. The programme is structured around seven tutorials taught online or within schools alongside an opening and graduation ceremony at university. 

My PhD practice-based research interrogates on female storytelling as a form of salvation and heroism in Arabic literature with the aim of reconstructing formidable and empowering storytellers in a Young Adult fantasy novel. I was given the wonderful opportunity to design a Creative Writing course inspired by my PhD project. I called it ‘Our Future Storytellers: Reviving Old, Traditional, Classic Stories in a contemporary Form’ due to my hopes that it will serve as a starting point for future writers. 

During my time at each placement, I teach a university-style course to KS4 students for several-weeks at a time combining workshop and seminar-style methods. The course challenges and encourages the students to analyse Arabic literature as a springboard and interrogate elements of craft to hone their own Creative Writing. Further to this, the students are encouraged to reflect on their inspirations and the elements of craft they have used in their writing. At the end of the course, the students often have workshopped several or one enduring piece of writing to then use towards their final assignments which are marked on a university scale. Assessment marking follows three principal criteria: Subject Knowledge, Critical Thinking and Written Communication. 

It’s been a real pleasure to see students motivated, growing confident in their writing, and deepening their awareness as they hone their craft as the course progresses. It is especially rewarding to see the spark of inspiration and passion that the students carry forward to their final assignments, constantly striving to improve their creative pieces and understand their critical pieces. So many students grow in confidence and gain pride over the course and it’s so moving for me to see this reflected in their final assignments. 

My time on The Scholars Programme with The Brilliant Club has been invaluable. I’ve developed many skills and my motivation towards my own creative practice has been bolstered and renewed watching my students grow and enjoy themselves along the way. I initially titled my course ‘Our Future Storytellers’ because of my hopes for my students to grow as writers. It has been incredibly affirming to see that aspiration become a reality as my students continue to thrive with their new-found confidence. 

About the author

Amirah Mohiddin is a writer, a third-year PhD student in Creative Writing and a tutor with The Brilliant Club teaching her self-designed Creative Writing course ‘Our Future Storytellers.’ Her PhD research focuses on female storytelling as a form of salvation and heroism in Arabic literature with the aim of reconstructing formidable and empowering storytellers in a YA fantasy novel. Her short stories have been published in magazines, ebooks and physical books, including Dancing Bear Books, Litro Magazine, Post-mortem Press, The New Luciad and Sanroo Publishing. You can read more about Amirah's PhD on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Guest Speakers Spring 2023

There are many exciting Creative Writing events happening this term in the Centre for New Writing at the University of Leicester. Here are some of them! They are all free and open to all - students, staff and the public. If you'd like more information about any of them, please email Jonathan Taylor, jt265[at]le[dot]ac[dot]uk or cnw[at]le[dot]ac[dot]uk for further details.

The State of Publishing, with Farhana Shaikh

Wednesday 8 March 2023, 4-5pm in Attenborough building, room 001

Multi-award-winning author, CEO of Dahlia Publishing and founder of The Asian Writer, Farhana Shaikh will discuss diversity in the publishing industry, and the role that small presses are playing to make the industry more inclusive.

What Came First, Character or Plot? A Masterclass, with Adele Parks

Wednesday 15 March 2023, 2-4pm in Attenborough building, room 002

Join one of the UK’s bestselling novelists for a masterclass on writing fiction. Please bring a draft piece of fiction or dramatic writing you’ve written to the class. 

N.B. This masterclass is part of the MA in Creative Writing, but is open to all. Numbers are limited, so if you'd like to attend, please email cnw[at]le[dot]ac[dot]uk.

Literary Leicester Festival 2023

Wednesday 22 March 2023 to Saturday 25 March 2023

Literary Leicester is the University of Leicester’s annual free literary festival, open to all. Brought to you by the School of Arts and the Centre for New Writing, the festival hosts events at the university and right across the city, in cinemas, theatres, community halls, schools and more.

Free and open to all! You can see the full line-up for this year's events here. 

Climate Fiction Workshop, with Liz Jensen, in collaboration with Literary Leicester 2023

Friday 24 March 2023, 130-230pm in Leicester Central Library

Join multi-award-winning novelist and member of Extinction Rebellion’s ‘Writers Rebel’ for a practical workshop on writing climate fiction or ‘cli-fi.’

N.B. Numbers are limited, so please book in advance on Literary Leicester's Eventbrite site here. 

Claiming Our Unconscious and Re-remembering Our Stolen History, with Amirah Mohiddin

Monday 27 March 2023, 10am-12 in Sir Bob Burgess building, room 002.

This masterclass will look at where our ideas come from, and using your own history and memories in writing. Amirah will be discussing her writing, inspirations and research. She will lead a workshop where you will be encouraged to use a memory, dream or folk story as impetus for a free-writing exercise.

Amirah Mohiddin is a writer, a third-year PhD student in Creative Writing and a tutor with The Brilliant Club teaching her self-designed Creative Writing course ‘Our Future Storytellers’ to students aged 13-16. Her PhD research focuses on female storytelling as a form of salvation and heroism in Arabic literature with the aim to reconstruct formidable and empowering storytellers in a YA fantasy novel. Her short stories have been published in magazines, ebooks and physical books, including Dancing Bear Books, Litro Magazine, Post-mortem Press, The New Luciad and Sanroo Publishing. Her MA novel, The Fallen Warriors, has been submitted to editors by her agent in the hope of acquirement.  

N.B. This guest talk is part of the MA in Creative Writing, but is also open to all. If you'd like to attend, please email jt265[at]le[dot]ac[dot]uk to reserve a place. 

Creative Writing Student Showcase, Literary Leicester

Monday 27 March, 530-645pm, Attenborough Arts Centre, Studio 1

As part of Literary Leicester Festival, we'll be holding a showcase event for University of Leicester BA, MA and PhD Creative Writing students to read and perform their poetry, stories and scripts. If you're a student and would like to get involved, please email Jonathan Taylor on jt265[at]le[dot]ac[dot]uk. You can book here. 

Writing Collaborations, Collaborating to Write: Creating Supportive Communities, with Barbara Cooke

Wednesday 29 March, 2-4pm in Attenborough room 002

This talk will focus on the different types of collaboration that make up the professional life of a writer, editor and academic. Barbara will be drawing on her own experiences of poetic co-creation, collaboration with an illustrator, and setting up and participating in writing retreats to show that while writing is usually a solitary act, no writer need ever be alone.

Dr Barbara Cooke is a senior lecturer in English at Loughborough University. She worked in publishing before completing a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of East Anglia. She is Co-executive Editor of the Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh and the author of Evelyn Waugh’s Oxford.

N.B. This guest talk is part of the MA in Creative Writing, but is also open to all. If you'd like to attend, please email jt265[at]le[dot]ac[dot]uk to reserve a place. 

Val McDermid, 'Killing People for Fun and Profit': Annual Creative Writing Lecture

Tuesday 9 May 2023, 615-730pm - venue TBC

One of the UK’s best-selling crime novelists talks about her work and craft, and will be signing books afterwards. 

N.B. Please book tickets via Eventbrite here. 

Masterclass, with Louis de Bernières

Wednesday 10 May 2023, 10am-12 in Attenborough building room 002

Join the multi-award winning author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Birds Without Wings, Notwithstanding, and many other books in a masterclass on the art of writing fiction.

N.B. This guest talk is part of the MA in Creative Writing, but is also open to all. If you'd like to attend, please email jt265[at]le[dot]ac[dot]uk to reserve a place. 

Amirah Mohiddin, "The Storyteller: My PhD in Creative Writing"

 

Born and raised in the U.K., Amirah Mohiddin spent much of her childhood (and teenage years!) writing and dreaming up fantasy stories. She developed quite a following in school as a storyteller that told ghost stories in the winter. She now spends her days working on a PhD in Creative Writing attempting to reconstruct female heroism in traditional Arabic literature via a YA fantasy novel. Her short stories, 'Alraqs,' 'Ruhi,' 'My Silence,' 'The Next Dawn' and 'I’ll Show you a Villainess' have been published in magazines, ebooks and physical books. She lives, breathes and bleeds writing but does occasionally enjoy going on a little walk and embroidering nerdy pictures from anime and books. You can read her story 'Ruhi' at Litro Magazine here. 

The Storyteller

By Amirah Mohiddin

In the summer of 2016, I decided to write and finish my first novel, blissfully unaware of how addictive writing really is. Now, five years on and five months into my PhD in Creative Writing, I can’t imagine a day without writing or thinking about writing. 

I’m (already) five months into the first year of my PhD in Creative Writing with the University of Leicester. I’m working on a 65,000-word YA fantasy novel, The Storyteller, and an accompanying reflective commentary of 25,000 words. My novel is about a seventeen-year-old girl, Huria, who develops the power to change stories on her sixteenth birthday. She can stop rainfall with a couple of sentences, bring characters to life, or even change a person’s memories. But her power comes at a cost. If she stops rainfall, it comes back as a deadlier thunderstorm, and if she changes another person’s memories, she also forfeits one of her own. Her parents believe she is a musiba, a calamity, with catastrophic levels of power. They lock her in a silo. A year later, Huria wakes up, teetering at the top of a wall surrounding the fortified citadel. She has no memory of the last year. She puts the pieces of the situation together, quickly realising that her life is under threat. To control her own life and story, she makes the drastic decision to sacrifice the people of the kingdom to keep herself safe. Huria’s story flips between past and present as she pieces together her memories, showing how she became a villain in someone else’s story and her choices towards changing her own story.

My writing is heavily inspired by female heroism in Arabic epics. Beyond the warrior women who physically fight, I’m also interested in the women who use stories to fight their battles, manipulate situations and drive the plot to a resolution. Key characters that I’m interested in are the well-known Scheherazade from A Thousand and One Nights, and also the lesser-known villainess, Qamariyya, from The Adventures of Sayf Ben Dhi Yazan. My main character, Huria, is a mixture of both heroic Scheherazade and villainous Qamariyya.  

My research focuses on a few key aspects, namely, young adult fantasy and Arab female storytelling. I’m looking at how Muslim women use fantasy, myth and folklore in storytelling to articulate female trauma and empowerment to rebel against patriarchal authority. One of the key pieces of advice writers get is: write what you know. As a writer – and I think many writers will agree – I put a piece of myself in my writing by writing what I know. Sometimes that’s with world-building, making it an Islamic state and using mythology and superstitions as the basis for my magic system. Other times it’s my experiences of gender inequality. With The Storyteller, I wanted to see a character who wasn’t purely a fierce warrior, but someone more representative of myself, a person who loves stories, writing and words. In essence, I want to see a Muslim bookworm or a bookdragon in a story. 

My PhD in Creative Writing has only just begun and I’m enjoying it immensely. In the last five months, I’ve been able to fully immerse myself with The Storyteller, a story idea I chose because it’s so close to my heart and because I want to do it justice for all the bookdragons of colour out there. 

"Ruhi": Short Story by Amirah Mohiddin

Congratulations to MA Creative Writing student Amirah Mohiddin, whose story "Ruhi" has just been published by Litro Magazine. You can read it here.