Inside the Story

Event information

What makes a real event – a family secret, a historical moment, a half-remembered place – become a story worth telling? And how do you make the leap from fact into fiction without losing what made it matter in the first place?

Join novelists and writing teachers Louise Morrish and Emma Darwin for a relaxed, wide-ranging conversation about the craft of turning real life into fiction. Whether you write historical fiction or contemporary, romance or literary, memoir-flavoured or entirely made up, the questions at the heart of this session will feel familiar: where do stories come from, what do we owe to the truth, and how do we find the courage to invent?

With readings, a facilitated conversation, and plenty of time for your questions, this is an event for writers at every stage — from those just starting to wonder if their grandmother's story might be a novel, to those already deep in a draft and wrestling with the gap between fact and imagination.

Louise Morrish leads Charm, the popular creative writing group at Goldfinch Books. Emma Darwin writes the widely-read This Itch of Writing, her Substack on craft and the writing life. Together, they bring warmth, rigour, and hard-won practical wisdom to every question about the page.

Tickets: £8 advance, £10 on the door.