Workshop

Spinning Tales from Myth and Folklore
with Zoe Gilbert

Friday 11 April 2025
3.00pm - 5.00pm; £20/£15 (places limited)

Central Library, 555 Silbury Blvd,
Central Milton Keynes, MK9 3HL​

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Myth and folklore have different characteristics and their own cultural resonances that we can borrow, subvert or extend to create new meaning. In this session, we'll look at two approaches to using myth and folklore as starting points for new fiction.

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In the first part of the workshop, we’ll explore ways in which we might retell a myth from a new angle. We’ll look at some old myths as well as new fiction that borrows from this tradition, and try creating our own modern myth. In the second part, we’ll draw on folklore – not whole stories with plots, but traditional superstitions, customs and rhymes – as the starting point for new stories, using folklore to ask new questions while inflecting our fiction with the old ways. We’ll see how contemporary authors have done this, and write our own folklore-inspired fiction.

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Participants will gain a set of tools for building on old, traditional material to create brand new stories with their own meanings, while retaining some of the resonances and power of myth and folklore. Reading material and inspiring texts on which to base the writing exercises will be provided. This workshop is suitable for writers of all levels, including beginners.

About Zoe Gilbert
Zoe Gilbert is the author of two novels: Folk, shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and adapted for BBC Radio, and Mischief Acts, a Sunday Times Book of the Year. Her short stories have appeared in anthologies and journals in the UK and internationally, and won prizes including the Costa Short Story Award. She is the co-editor with Lily Dunn of the recovery anthology, A Wild and Precious Life, and is co-director of London Lit Lab, where she teaches creative writing courses on folklore, folk tales, the fantastic and enchantment, and also mentors writers. As well as fiction, she has written librettos for classical composers including Helen Grime and Huw Watkins, and writes and presents folklore and foraging segments for the popular nature podcast, As the Season Turns. She is a Senior Visiting Fellow in creative writing at the University of Suffolk, but she lives in Kent, where the landscape is inspiring her third novel.

More about Zoe and London Lit Lab:

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