What’s New at Arvon in 2026
29 Jan 2026 / News
This is a time of year when many writers are beginning afresh and setting intentions, and Arvon has more ways than ever before to support them with that commitment to their craft.
In response to your feedback, this year we’re offering new course types, new themes, and bringing new writers to the programme, alongside the trusted tutors and highly effective formats you know and love.
Firstly, Arvon Plus: fully catered residential courses that run from Saturday to Saturday, including two extra untutored days purely to write and put to action your learning from the week. Courses with Adam Weymouth and Sophy Roberts, Rob Cowen and Amy Liptrot, and Benjamin Pester and Kaiya Shang are already available.
Next, short courses, running Monday to Thursday: for those who need a briefer engagement but love the immersive experience of a residential. These include a short course with Katherine Clements and Liz Flanagan, exploring aspects of literary craft inspired by place and how to develop rich, immersive worlds for readers, and another with Kate Fox and Helen Kara which is shaped specifically around the needs of neurodivergent writers. And since 2026 is the Year of Reading, we’ll be offering a short course at Totleigh Barton with Sam Jordison and Jo Bell all about reading as a writer – learning lessons on craft from the greatest prose stylists, and applying those lessons to our own work.
Arvon at Home has also been listening to our writers and is launching daytime Online Writing Months, which take place every Thursday over four weeks. They are live, fully interactive experiences designed to accommodate busy lives and to help you create a regular writing practice. We’ll be covering Writing the Body with Khairani Barokka and Louise Kenward, Creating a Poetry Collection with Mark Pajak and Helen Mort, and Poetry and Memoir with Gwyneth Lewis and Romalyn Ante.
We’re developing new thematic strands in our residential programme, with Natasha Pulley and Rosie Garland leading a course on fiction drawn from myth; for the stone-lovers, a return for Alyson Hallett and Ruth Allen in the place where writing and geology meet; and Salena Godden and Nikita Gill’s ‘Feminine Creativity’ week of love, grief, rage, and hope in poetry and prose.
We’ve been working in partnership with a variety of organisations to deliver in-person Arvon experiences closer to you, so for 2026 look out for pop-up sessions led by Tessa Hadley at Curious Minds festival, Helen Oyeyemi and Lily Dunn at Hay festival, and Helen Gordon at the RWA in Bristol. Online, we’re partnering with the Griffin Prize to offer a masterclass with poet, essayist and Cornell professor Ishion Hutchinson, and with Obsidian to offer new sessions in the Black Poetry Lectures series.
We will soon be launching the next Advanced Writing Programme, giving five poets, five fiction writers and five non-fiction writers the opportunity of a two-year engagement with Arvon, via online workshops and immersive residential weeks as well as sustained mentoring from three of our finest tutors: Fiona Benson, Cynan Jones and Jessica J. Lee.
Finally, there’s a wonderful and supportive community building around the Saturday Writing Club: the perfect way to give your writing a kick-start or to share your progress with others, and learn tips and insights from Arvon tutors too.
Arvon’s programme is growing all the time and we aim to offer something for every writer, no matter the level of experience, no matter the level of resource in terms of time, energy or finances, and no matter which genres light your creative fires. Everyone is welcome; I hope you will enjoy exploring.
— Mary Morris, Artistic Director at Arvon
