Arvon Advanced Writing Programme
APPLICATIONS FOR THIS YEAR’S PROGRAMME ARE NOW CLOSED. WE WILL OPEN THE PORTAL FOR 2026-2028 EARLY NEXT YEAR
Arvon’s Advanced Writing Programme offers 15 writers two years of sustained engagement and the opportunity to work towards completion of a project, whether in poetry, non-fiction or fiction. It was launched in 2024 and applications are now open for our 2025-2027 cohort.
The Advanced Writing Programme consists of three Arvon residential writing weeks, three Arvon online writing weeks, six Arvon online group workshops and eight Arvon online 1-1 sessions. It will run from September 2025 to July 2027, culminating in a graduation showcase to which friends, family and industry professionals will be invited.
The programme will be led by three dedicated Arvon tutors – William Atkins (non-fiction), Pascale Petit (poetry) and Rachel Seiffert (fiction) – who will work with the group as a whole for elements of the programme, and then more concentratedly with the five individuals comprising their respective genre groups.
Five places are allocated for each genre – poetry, non-fiction, fiction – with participants selected through an application process that closes on 15 April 2025.
Graduates of the Arvon Advanced Writing Programme will receive a Certificate of Completion and join what will become, in time, a growing body of Arvon Advanced Writing Programme alumni.
The full course fee is £8,000, with two free places and two half-price places available. If you wish to apply for a free or half-price place, please indicate this in your application, providing details of eligibility. You can read about our criteria for grants and concessions here. And if you have any questions please contact us at awp@arvon.org.
Please complete the form below to apply:
APPLICATIONS FOR THE 2025-27 PROGRAMME ARE NOW CLOSED
About the tutors
William Atkins is the author of The Moor, The Immeasurable World: A Desert Journey, and Exiles: Three Island Journeys (all published by Faber). He’s a contributor to Granta, Harper’s and the Financial Times. The Moor was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize, and The Immeasurable World: A Desert Journey won the Stanford Dolman Travel Writing Award and the British Library Eccles Prize.
Pascale Petit’s eighth collection, Tiger Girl (Bloodaxe Books, 2020), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize and for Wales Book of the Year. Her seventh collection, Mama Amazonica (Bloodaxe Books, 2017), won the inaugural Laurel Prize and the RSL Ondaatje Prize. Her debut novel, My Hummingbird Father, was published by Salt in 2024, and her ninth collection, Beast, published by Bloodaxe in 2025, won an Arthur Welton award. She was a co-founding tutor of The Poetry School and taught popular poetry courses at Tate Modern for nine years.
Rachel Seiffert has published five novels and a collection of short stories. Her books have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize and Dublin IMPAC Award, and longlisted three times for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, most recently in 2018. In 2011 she received the EM Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2003, she was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. Rachel has taught Creative Writing at Birkbeck, Goldsmiths, Spalding College in the US, and the Humboldt University, Berlin, amongst others. She is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow and First Story Writer in Residence, working in London secondary schools.
Key dates
Applications window opens: 18th February 2025.
Applications window closes: 5pm on the 15th April 2025. Applicants must submit a writing sample of 5k words or 10 poems, as well as a personal statement.
Online interviews: first week of June.
Applicants will be notified by 16 June.
First residential week: w/c 29th September 2025 at Totleigh Barton.
Two further residential weeks will take place in September 2026 and July 2027. Three online writing weeks will take place in January 2026, May 2026 and February 2027. In between these, there will either be an online workshop or online 1-1 tutorial in each month.