Politics and Prose with Preti Taneja

How to work with real life laws, evidence and witness testimony in all your many forms.

In this workshop we will look at the ethics, politics and aesthetics of working with real life situations and research evidence, including legal documents, and gathering witness testimony, as you write.

We will talk about situations where we have gathered witness testimony for our research, how to handle sensitive material and respect interviewees; we will share and build towards best practice when your work includes other’s real stories or identifiable lives especially friends and family. We may discuss how we can engage with legal documents that inform our world-building and how we can go about this in a fictionalised way.

You will leave the workshop with an appreciation of the value of research and the wealth of real documents and stories that exist for writers to draw in formally inventive ways. You will learn how to bring the politics into the prose with style and confidence.