A six-week online writing course
Wednesdays 30th April – 4th June
6pm-8pm BST
Online
This course is an introduction to writing imaginative and speculative fiction – from sci-fi and fantasy to alternate history. You will learn techniques for world-building and peopling different realities; imagining utopias, dystopias and possible futures; how to write strong characters and structure your storyline; and how to make the worlds you create vivid and alive.
Following in the footsteps of writers like Ursula K. Le Guin and Margaret Atwood, we will examine how speculative writing plays a deeply subversive role, destabilising ‘the way things are’ and allowing our imagination to break free of its bindings. Imagining different pasts, and futures, enables different presents.
The course will combine teaching and reading – with inspirations ranging from China Miéville, Adrian Tchaikovsky and Octavia E. Butler to Alan Garner and William Golding – with writing exercises, group discussions, feedback and structured writing time. By the end of the six weeks, you will have completed a solid beginning to a new story, or deepened and expanded a work already in progress. Whether you are a published author or a curious beginner, all you need is something to write on and your imagination.
The cost of the course is £240 (£40 per two-hour session).
Of all the writing courses I’ve taught, this one has been the most lively, fun and surprising. I’m looking forward to venturing to different planets, dimensions and times with a new group of explorers!
For more info and bookings, contact me on scrutiny@gmail.com
About me
I am best known as a travel writer (Outlandish, Where the Wild Winds Are and Walking the Woods and the Water), but have always written fantastical tales dealing with other realities, many of which were originally published in issues of Dark Mountain. My short fiction collection, Loss Soup and Other Stories, was published in 2020. My debut novel Red Smoking Mirror – an alternate history set in 16th-century Mexico – was published in 2021, and shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Viking Award for Fiction with a Sense of Place.
I have taught writing courses at the Arvon Foundation, the University of Bristol, Schumacher College (with the Dark Mountain Project), Bristol’s Folk House and other institutions. I also work as an editor and a writing mentor. In September 2025 I will start a two-year placement as a Royal Literary Fellow at the University of Bristol.
Testimonials
“This was a brilliant and encouraging experience. I now have two chapters of a novel and several ideas for other novels, a huge amount of inspiration and insight, and I am so excited about what lies ahead.”
– Student, Arvon Foundation
“It was excellent how we almost ‘accidentally’ invented an entire world, outlined a plot, developed characters and drew a visual representation of the world we were creating.”
– Student, Bristol Folk House
“The course was engaging, purposeful and creative. I felt a sense of achievement and insight from completing the core writing assignments. The examples, pair working and discussion were well-orchestrated and the last session where we shared our work was rewarding and intriguing.”
– Student, University of Bristol
“Nick is an excellent tutor and as an award-winning published author has practical experience to back up his teaching. The classes were interactive and, as well as learning a lot, I thoroughly enjoyed the course. I highly recommend it.”
– Student, Bristol Folk House
Praise for Red Smoking Mirror
“With Red Smoking Mirror, Nick Hunt has created the love child of J.G. Ballard and Ursula K. Le Guin.”
– Joanna Pocock, author of Surrender
“A beautifully written evocation of a world that never was.”
– Lisa Tuttle in the Guardian science fiction and fantasy review roundup
“The reader wanders through Hunt’s richly imagined Tenochtitlán in a beautiful stupor.”
– Times Literary Supplement
“A straight-up novel of intrigue, full of shadowy secrets, cloak-and-dagger politics and intimate betrayals … it offers a dark, half-obscured reflection of reality.”
– Financial Times
