Creative Writing
Storytelling is at the heart of Creative Writing at Goldsmiths. How we each tell our story is essential to who we are and to what we become.
Studying storytelling at Goldsmiths offers a toolbox of immense practical and creative use. Storytelling stays with the students whether or not they become professional writers. It invariably proves useful in the different fields they enter.
This year’s cohort produced wonderful, original and challenging work. Their pieces include memoirs and imaginative work, as well as issue-driven stories.
In the film script Hudson Degree Zero, Aadit Bhardwaj takes us on a mesmerising journey across the USA. The character, ‘Hudson’ eventually reunites with long-lost friend, ‘Jeanie’. Along the way there is murder, poetry, a quest for meaning and a fatal finale.
In Aisha Azam’s comedy TV pilot, Beasts of Asia, we meet a working-class family just returned from Pakistan. With energy and high comedy, Azam introduces this colourful family, including a disastrous uncle, a formidable aunt and a next door neighbour who just might be as dreadful as his uncle who used to terrorise them.
Arthur Woolf-Hoyle’s horror film, Daisy Chain, is set in Bermondsey, London. The location and characters draw on Arthur’s own childhood, resulting in an intimate style of storytelling. The story grows increasingly uncanny as we are introduced to ‘Oliver’, his mother, his sister and an overly friendly ‘Mrs Stanton’ who preys on his family.
In her short stories, Glossaries, Isabella Valencia Zapata’s presents us Colombia through the eyes of ‘the Curator’. Travelling with this character, the reader encounters marvellous personalities on a bus, in a village, during games. The visionary style means that the reader can almost smell and touch the environment.
Ivy (Xiaoshan) Huang’s short story Admission and Handover Rules for Ward 302 is eerie and suspense-filled. One room in a Chinese provincial hospital has been taken over by ‘depression’. ‘Yu Nian’ solves this mystery and finds a way to control the room, but this has grave consequences for her.
Jakub Radowski’s short story, Billy, presents the glacial unravelling of a boy coming of age. ‘Billy’ grows up in a house that has a mind of its own. The house seems to demand that his family follows its rules - his silent parents and the staff comply, in an almost cult-like manner. Slowly, Billy discovers a secret hidden from him his whole life.
Ruben Dicker’s comedy TV pilot Bumpkin is set in Somerset, as a new generation is competing to be mayor. The intrigues of the town are set in counterpoint to the despair and hope of a rural community, seen through the eyes of two young people trying to make their own space in their hometown.
Lucie Schoenefeld set her present-day comedy TV pilot, Mostly Fine, in London. Two German best friends reunite in London for work and study. We follow them on their first day together in series of absurd situations. They discover, that in their time apart, life has pushed them in quite different directions, testing their relationship.
The short story Stardust and Her Rollerblades from Mars is set in Ireland and inspired by a fairytale. Keisha Hubbard describes the life of a teenager, ‘Nala’, whose twin brother is in a coma. Their mother blames Nala for the loss of her precious son. She meets ‘Nadine’ and they fall in love; she finds her voice and begins to heal.
Vincent Canfora’s screenplay, After Hours gives us a slice of life in the catering industry and the stressful grind of daily life facing so many young Londoners. We follow ‘Oliver’ as he negotiates water damage, heartbreak, co-workers’ drama and ungrateful management.
Written in dream-like prose Mari Adamsopiyeva’s My Treasure is a fast-paced story about a young Korean woman, ‘Amy’, who is dealing with the aftermath of her father’s murder. This driven woman gets her revenge, but she has lost everything in the process.
Zige Liu’sTo Live follows ‘Zhang’ from poverty through university to success as a stationmaster and in the mining industry. Written in a crisp, clear style, the reader is encouraged to root for Zhang through each twist and turn of the narrative, as he eventually loses everything, except his money.
Malene Sheppard Skaerved, writer, filmmaker and Creative Writing Convenor