WORKSHOPS
Welcome to our workshop page.
We host a number of different workshops in Desperate Literature and decided to put a list together!
If you’re interested in participating in a workshop,
please be sure to contact the organiser directly.
We are currently closed to new workshops
but will be open to new propositions as of January 2026.
PERMANENT SESSIONS:
Feral Nature
a one-day workshop
with Joan Fleming
28th Feb
€75
In this one-day writing workshop, award-winning author Joan Fleming will lead playful and generative exercises that invite absurdity, indecorum, and the ridiculous into your writing, via our focus on the natural world.
Expect to spend the day doing close-readings of marvellous short texts across fiction, poetry, and non-fiction; engaging in dynamic group discussion and brainstorming; and going inwards periods of quiet, focussed writing where you respond to a series of prompts designed to get you thinking differently about the possibilities of the page – and the possibilities of our fragile, strange, entangled connections with everything on earth that isn’t us.
The day will include:
- Morning session 90 minutes
- Break for coffee
- Late morning session 90 minutes
- Long lunch break
- Afternoon session 120 minutes
Full Description:
Joan’s approach to writing workshops is to create an inviting, inclusive, dynamic container where we can think new thoughts together in a safe space for experimentation, and for sharing freshly generated work. Themes might include: our strange relationship with animals; blurring supposedly hard boundaries between the human and non-human; leaning into our feral inheritance; the curious intelligence of wild nature; and the grief that arises when we contemplate wild nature in deep trouble.
By the end of the day:
Expect to come away with three new pieces drafted, to revise, refine, and expand.
Joan’s particular interest is in taking your standard “nature writing” – i.e.., the call of the wild geese! awe! transcendence! – and getting a little weird with it. A little irreverent. A little absurd. Come and connect with the wild, the odd, the sad, the animal, the uncanny, the broken, and the eco-absurd.
About Joan:
Joan Fleming is an award-winning author from Australia/Aotearoa. Her debut novel The Fig Book — a darkly funny madcap ecological folktale — is forthcoming with Mariner in the US and Allen & Unwin in Australia/NZ. In 2025 she was the Kaipukahu Writer in Residence at the University of Waikato. Her honors include the Biggs Poetry Prize, the Verge Prize for Poetry, the Harri Jones Memorial Prize from the Hunter Writers’ Centre, a Creative New Zealand writing fellowship, and a residency with the Michael King Writers’ Centre. She has been teaching creative writing at Antipodean universities for over a decade.
SIGN UP HERE
PERMANENT SESSIONS:
The DL Readers
2nd & 4th Saturdays
11h00 – 12h30
Discussion in English.
TO SIGN UP
PLEASE FILL IN THE FOLLOWING FORM
FREE
Casa Poética
facilitated by Irene Torra
Winter Dates:
January: 11 & 18
February: 1 & 15
March: 1, 15 (with guest poet) & 22 (Open Mic)
Casa Poética is a poetry discussion group and community. This term, we will meet twice a month to read, listent to and discuss a curated selection of poems around the theme: The body on the line: language, voice and flesh in slam poetry.
One session will feature a guest poet, and we will close the season with an Open Mic on March 22.
To join please fill in this FORM
or contact Irene (here or via irenetorra.poesia@gmail.com)
Single session: 9 euros
Full term (6 sessions): 50 euros
Open mic: 5 euros
Sour Mango
Last Sunday of month
11h30 – 13h00
Sour Mango was created to put BIPOC voices front and centre. Each month we read and discuss books by BIPOC authors, exploring stories that move us, challenge us, and open our minds ✨🥭
To join, contact Iqra on iqrahmed25@gmail.com
Creative Writing Workshop
with Geneviève Genicot
2nd Saturday
14h – 17h
Looking for a fresh spark for your writing? Let contemporary Francophone authors open new doors to your imagination.
Each session introduces a new writer — their world, their style, their technique — and a selected text, provided with an English translation. From there, you’ll be guided through creative prompts and gentle feedback designed to help you grow in your writing.
Geneviève Eva Genicot is a Belgian poet, fiction writer, and editor, and has been leading writing workshops for a decade.
Each session: €23
Including a €3 discount on any book purchased on the day.
Limited spots.
To sign up, contact: genevieve.genicot@gmail.com
The Desperate Knitters
2nd & 4th Tuesday
18h30 – 20h
Come and knit!
All levels are welcome including beginners, and although we won’t be teaching I’m sure everyone will be happy to share tips
Our first meet up will be:
Tuesday 16th December, 18:30–20:00.
FREE.
WAITING LIST here.
Madrid Queer Women’s Book Club
2nd Sunday
13h – 15h
We are a group of English-speaking queer women (inclusively and expansively defined) in Madrid. We read and discuss books monthly — the majority (but not all of them) by and/or about queer women.
FREE ENTRY
To sign up, please go via the Meet-Up page.