Tentacles Creative Writing Masterclass: CJ DeBarra

Come and create in community! Explore creative writing in this masterclass for disabled writers. All levels welcome.

💻This is a HYBRID masterclass; a mix of in-person and online attendance💻

Join Tentacles for a creative writing masterclass 'Between the lines: Creative Non-Fiction and Lived Experience as a disabled writer'. This masterclass for anyone who considers themself to be d/Deaf, disabled, neurodivergent and/or chronically ill. This session explores creative approaches to writing about lived experience, particularly through creative non-fiction and autofiction. Author and journalist, Cj De Barra, will examine how writers can transform personal experience, especially around disability, neurodivergence and queerness, into engaging, thoughtful narratives. This will include how identity, memory, and experience can shape creative work, along with tips and tricks for getting started, maintaining control over our stories, and publishing options.

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This masterclass will be lead by CJ DeBarra, who is an Irish, non-binary journalist, author, and oral historian based in Nottingham. They have been a journalist for nearly 20 years, focused on history, LGBTQ+ life, disability and neurodiversity. CJ has also authored Neuroqueer: a neurodivergent guide to love, sex and everything in between, drawing on their experiences with ADHD and queer identity. They have been on a book tour across England with dates including Wilderness Festival, Greenman Festival, Shambhala Festival, Commonpress Bookshop, Juno Bookshop and many more.

The Notts Queer History Archive, founded in 2022 by journalist CJ De Barra, is a grassroots oral history project that documents Nottingham’s LGBTQIA+ community. The wider archive covers ephemera and newspaper clippings from the 1770s to the present. With over 190 interviews, it captures personal stories, memories of queer spaces, activism, and social change. The archive has hosted exhibitions, events, and has published two volumes with Five Leaves Publications.

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Tentacles is run by and for disabled people. We will ask you to provide a few personal details in advance to make sure we can meet your access needs, and if you have any questions, please get in touch with us!

Pricing

We know finances can be a barrier to accessing creative workshops, which is why we’ve set up ticketing as donation based. However, we ask that you consider the guidelines below for how much you pay for this course. You can choose what you pay based on your circumstances - you won’t be asked for any proof, we just ask that you are honest. We think it’s important to make workshops accessible for disabled people, and we also believe in valuing disabled people’s work!

• 0-£6: Discounted rate for those who would struggle to pay the standard workshop fee. For people who frequently stress about meeting basic needs and don’t always achieve them
• £7-£15: We think this range fits in the ‘standard fee rate’ and is for folks who stress about meeting basic needs but still regularly achieve them
• £16-35: The ‘pay it forward’ rate. For those who want to support initiatives like this and are able to financially do so

If you have a personal support/care assistant and you are planning to attend in person, please book an ‘in person assistant’ ticket for your PA as we need to know how many people are going to be in the room for health and safety reasons.

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