Disrupt Your Imagination with Melissa Ashley

About

Using surrealist and ekphrastic techniques to manifest your creativity.

This 3-hour workshop offers new approaches to understanding creativity and originating ideas. Borrowing techniques of the surrealists and ekphrastic observation (it’s all about art!), participants will generate new writing for existing and future projects. Whether you want to start a new story or freshen a novel, the workshop will send you off with a notebook of material, inspiration, and tricks to manifest your imagination whenever you need it.

Learning outcomes

As part of this workshop, you will:

• Learn how surrealism can refresh your imagination
• Discover tools to break through writing blocks
• Generate new writing

Format

This is an in-person workshop with a focus on writing craft; it will be held at State Library of Queensland. This workshop is suitable for fiction writers of all levels and backgrounds.

About Melissa

Melissa Ashley is the author of best-selling historical fiction novels The Bee and the Orange Tree, The Naturalist of Amsterdam and The Birdman's Wife, which won the Queensland Literary Awards Fiction prize and the ABA Booksellers Choice Award. She has published a collection of poetry, The Hospital for Dolls, as well as short stories, essays and academic articles. She is passionate about historical women's forgotten lives, particularly in science. Melissa teaches creative writing and poetry workshops and is an experienced editor and mentor. She lives in Brisbane with her family.