Writing the Occult: Connection to Land
Saturday 15 June, 2024
Starts 1pm UK / 9am ET
Early bird tickets are £35 until 8 June 2024, or £40 from 9 June. Sales end on 14 June.
It’s that time of year when the land is in flux. In the northern hemisphere, we’re blooming, growing, getting ready to bear our fruits; in the southern hemisphere it’s the time of waning, harvest, and preparing for the long winter ahead. This is the time of year where folk horror stories live and breathe, when mythology takes over, when ritual and spiritual practices thrive.
And it’s the time when we are, all of us, connecting to the land in some way.
What does that mean for us as writers and storytellers? That’s what we’ll explore in this fifth edition of Writing the Occult: how writers can connect to the land for inspiration, for plot, for creativity, for character, all timed for the week of the solstice.
We’ll look at connecting to land myths, ritual landscapes and spirits of place. We’ll use our land to spark fantasy creations, and land in general as a driving force in your story. We’ll look at not just the beauty, but the hostility, too. And we’ll ask how the climate crisis is impacting the writer’s connection to land—and what we can do as writers to raise awareness of climate needs in a responsible and ethical way—with a special panel featuring climate fiction writers. And finally, we’ll bring it all together with a generative writing workshop so you can go forth into Solstice week with sparks of your own new land connections.
Speakers confirmed so far include:
- Ally Wilkes
- Caroline Wise
- Tiffany Morris
- Penny Billington
- Kerry Hadley-Price
- Paul Hardisty
- Xan van Rooyen
- Akintoba Kalejaye
- Shona Kinsella
- Lindsey McLeod
- Renan Bernardo
- Lindsey Trout Hughes
- Lisa Brideau
Full schedule:
1pm UK / 8am ET: The druid's connection to the land, with Penny Billington (60 mins)
~15 min break~
2.15pm UK / 9.15am ET: Connecting to hostile landscapes, with Ally Wilkes (30 mins)
2.45pm UK / 9.45am ET: Connecting to Scottish land myths in fiction, with Shona Kinsella (30 mins)
~15 min break~
3.30pm UK / 10.30am ET: Leys, Spirit of Place, and Stepping into the Ritual Landscape, with Caroline Wise (60 mins)
~15 min break~
4.45pm UK / 11.45am ET: Using land as a character: A First Nations viewpoint, with Tiffany Morris (30 mins)
5.15pm UK / 12.15pm ET: Inspiration from England's Black Country, with Kerry Hadley-Price (30 mins)
5.45pm UK / 12.45pm ET: Lessons from the Sauutiverse: Using land myths to spark fantasy creations, with Xan van Rooyen and Akintoba Kalejaye of the Sauuti Collective (30 mins)
~15 min break~
6.30pm UK / 1.30pm ET: The Nature of Literature: an introduction to climate and eco-fiction, with Dr Kevan Manwaring (30 mins)
7pm UK / 2pm ET: Panel: Fiction writers and the climate emergency, with Eve Smith, Paul Hardisty, Lindz McLeod, Renan Bernardo, and Lisa Brideau (moderator) (60 mins)
~short break~
Around 8pm UK / 3pm ET: Generative workshop on putting connections to land on the page, with Lindsey Trout Hughes (up to 60 mins)
Writing the Occult is a boutique series of events brought to you by the Society of Ink Slingers, in partnership with Alex Davis Events. Our approach is to bring together the fiction world with folklore and academia to bring a well-rounded view to a specific area of interest to both speculative fiction writers and those with a hankering for the esoteric.
Speaker bios and session details at writingtheoccult.carrd.co. Follow @societyofinkslingers on Instagram for announcements.
