Writers at York

Writers at York is a lively programme of readings and workshops, which bring to York the exciting new voices and some of the most important contemporary writers. Events in recent years have featured poets Denise Riley, Claudia Rankine, Alice Oswald, and Seamus Heaney, dramatists David Edgar and Courttia Newland, novelists Graham Swift, Emma Donoghue, J. M. Coetzee, Jennifer Egan, and many others.

See below for more information about this year’s events, and an archive of past events.

2025/26 Programme

Rozie Kelly: Kingfisher - Publishing a Debut Novel, 8 October 2025
A Conversation with Jack Mackay, 13 October 2025
Sunny Singh: Refuge: Stories of War (and Love), 23 October 2025
Bernard O'Donoghue: Editing Heaney, 12 November 2025
Creative Writing Open Mic, 4 December 2025

2024/25 Programme

Insight into Publishing: Literary Agents, Career Guidance, and More, 2 October 2024
Still City: Diary of an Invasion, Oksana Maksymchuk, 21 October 2024
Kimberly Campanello, 20 November 2024
Creative Writing Open Mic, 5 December 2024
Daniela Azevedo: Breaking Into Bookstagram, 3 April 2025
Briony Hughes: Water Poetics III, 1 May 2025
Curtis Chin: Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant, 28 May 2025

2023/24 Programme

Creative Writing Open Mic, 12 October 2023
Northern Poetry, 13 November 2023
Revoicing Medieval Poetry, 30 November 2023
Water Poetics: in Conversation with Alycia Pirmohamed, 22 February 2024
LGBTQ+History Month & International Women's Day poetry sharing, 29 February 2024
Experiments in Life Writing: In Conversation with Francesca Bratton, 6 March 2024
If Freedom Writes No Happier Alphabet, 21 March 2024

Events archive