Shyama Perera

Subjects taught by Shyama:
Creative Writing courses
Blogging for Beginners classes

Shyama Perera is a former Guardian Journalist and a published novelist. Her first novel, Haven’t Stopped Dancing Yet, was released by renowned publishing house Sceptre in 1999, and since then she has published three more novels. Shyama is a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, as well as writing regularly for the national press, contributing short stories and essays to anthologies and presenting on radio and TV. She also writes a theatre reviews blog: Monkey Matters Theatre.

“Writing well is not about style but content – you have to have something to say that will immediately engage the reader. Some of our most successful authors are not particularly great writers, but they tell cracking stories. On our workshops, we don’t study writing, we use different forms of writing to demystify the process, so you go away feeling much more confident about getting your stories on the page, and much less precious about how those early scribblings should look!”

As a highly experienced creative writing instructor, Shyama’s classes are aimed at improving confidence – helping students develop their writing skills across all areas, from business reports and web copy, to memoir and fiction. Read an interview with Shyama, and hear some of her Blogging and Creative Writing tips here.

She tweets @portfoliowoman