Accessibility statement

IMPROVE YOUR WRITING WITH HELP FROM A PROFESSIONAL WRITER

Posted on 4 November 2013

A free and confidential consultation service to all undergraduate and postgraduate students to help with essays, dissertations, reports and thesis.

improve your writing skills

Paul Mills and Paul Sayer are the Royal Literary Fellows for 2014-15 and are here to provide a free confidential consultation service to all students.

Get advice on:

  • Writing for a reader
  • Developing your ideas
  • Punctuation, sentence and paragraph structure
  • Incorporating your research
  • Writing and time management

Paul Mills will be available on Mondays and Fridays during term time, and will be working mainly with students from Arts and Humanities including Education, Law, Economics, Politics and Philosophy.

Paul Sayer will be available on Thursdays, working with students from Science, Social Science, Health Studies. 

Appointments are on a 1-2-1 basis lasting 45-50 minutes. To make an appointment please contact paul.mills@york.ac.uk or paul.sayer@york.ac.uk - the RLF office is in the English Department, first floor, D/L/140

More about Paul Mills

Paul Mills has written six collections of poems, and two books on writing: Writing in Action, and more recently The Routledge Creative Writing Coursebook. Two of his plays have been performed – at the National Theatre and West Yorkshire Playhouse.

He has been Writer in Residence at Manchester and Leeds Universities. In 1999 he won the Poetry Business Book and Pamphlet Competition.

His most recent publication is You Should've Seen Us, containing poems recorded onto silent films from the Yorkshire Film Archive, with photographs from the films. 

More about Paul Sayer

Paul Sayer has been a writer for 26 years. He is the author of eight novels, including The Comforts of Madness, a winner of the Whitbread (now Costa) Book of the Year, the Booker Prize ‘long-listed’ The Absolution Game, and most recently the historical novel The True Adventures of Richard Turpin.  

He has also written for The Sunday Times, The Times, The Independent, Time Out, Nursing Standard, and numerous other publications. In addition, he has been a tutor for the Arvon Foundation and was the RLF Fellow at Leeds University for two years, specialising in human geography and environmental studies.

A former psychiatric nurse, he retains a particular interest in all mental and general health matters. 

Contacting the Pauls

If you would like some detailed practical ideas about how to write more effectively, whether an undergraduate essay or report, postgraduate dissertation or PhD thesis, please contact the Paul Mills at paul.mills@york.ac.uk or Paul Sayer at paul.sayer@york.ac.uk

For more on Paul Mills visit www.paulmillswriting.co.uk

The Writing Centre

Help and support on writing is also available from the Writing Centre based in the library.