We know our technology, people, content and learning model are special – as do the people we work with.
Since 2011, we’ve worked in partnership with some fantastic organisations, whose specialist knowledge brings our one-of-a-kind learning to life.
Each partnership is different, each one bringing different kinds of learners, tutors and management challenges.
The evolution and richness of our expertise and offering is in no small part down to what we have learned from working with the best in the business.
We do the heavy lifting, so our clients can get on with their day job!
Our first client back in 2011. We had the idea for PWA, a Masters-level novel-writing course and learning platform, and wondered who might be interested. We saw that Faber Academy were running creative writing courses face-to-face in their London offices – the first publisher to do so.
An elevator pitch (literally) to CEO Stephen Page at the London Bookfair convinced him of the business case for online courses that could reach a global audience, and led to the birth of the online arm of the Faber Academy.
We conceived, created, set up and ran all aspects of the online Faber Academy for eleven years, launching their very first online offers for fiction writers at all stages of development – from short courses in key skills through advanced novel-writing courses. Thousands of learners from across the globe kickstarted their careers, while the Faber team were free to concentrate on marketing.
When we were approached by Granta, wanting to move into education, we were excited to work with a publisher who genuinely shared our vision and enthusiasm for developing new writing talent at a very high level.
We work very closely with the Granta team to conceive, produce and deliver world-class online writing courses that nurture new voices, forms and experimentation across short fiction, the novel, memoir, nature-writing and long-form journalism. We also produced for Granta a shiny new Granta Writing Workshops website.
It has been a privilege to work with the Granta team and some of the world’s finest literary writers, including Sarah Moss, Eley Williams and Jessica J Lee to produce learning experiences that we feel are unparalleled and shift the boundaries in terms of creative teaching as well as writing.
One of our founders met John 40 years ago, when he was her husband’s best friend.
When Into the Woods was published, it reframed our attitude to stories, offering a new approach to understanding why stories work and how to apply those principles to the TV, film and video-games industries – and beyond. We asked ‘When is a book a training course?’ and decided to create serious learning based on the story principles in the book along with John’s teaching experience (he previously founded the BBC Studios Writers’ Academy).
Since then, together we have built a suite of practical, industry-focused training for creative professionals at any stage of their career, from screenwriters and documentarians to development execs, video-games producers, production accountants and showrunners.
The CPD-accredited learning is led by BAFTA-winning John Yorke and his team of sector experts who deliver to production companies, broadcasters, streamers and talent-development organisations around the world, including BBC, Channel 4, Netflix, Sony Animation and Screen Ireland as well teams of lawyers, manufacturers, IT and pharmaceutical companies – and an army of freelance creatives.
We’d always admired Bookouture’s bold and innovative spirit as a publisher of commercial fiction, so when they asked for help to pull together a suite of courses based on their voluminous knowledge of how to create a bestseller, we jumped at the chance.
Together we worked to shape their extensive content, publishing know-how, and go-getting practical ethos into compelling, accessible learning experiences. PageOne launched in March 2026.
Cornerstones Literary Consultancy
We met Helen Corner-Bryant in Salisbury after a chance encounter, but were already aware of her book On Editing, a pioneer in taking a professional approach to self-editing. It’s written in such a practical and accessible way that it adapted easily into a training course – both for authors needing to learn how to self-edit, and for editors, publishers and agents wanting to polish up their own editing skills.
The 18-week, CPD-accredited Edit Your Novel course has now been running for five years.
We worked with the inspirational Claire Malcolm and her team on a three-year funded project (2021-24) with the trailblazing writing development agency New Writing North, who lead the development of creative writing and reading in the North of England. Together, we created a suite of online writing courses that gave career-changing opportunities to people from across society, with discounted bursaries available to students based in the North of Tyne.
As Education Partners to Jericho Writers, we powered the Ultimate Novel Writing Course, giving authors the tools, motivation and support to complete a publishable draft of their novel in just twelve months.
We were thrilled to work with the charismatic Caroline Ambrose, driven as she is to offer novel writers opportunities to improve their craft while gaining exposure to fantastic agents and publishing people.
With our partners, Cornerstones Literary Consultancy, we offer one longlisted writer from the Bath Novel Award and the Bath Children’s Novel Award the opportunity to hone their self-editing skills and develop their manuscript with a free place on our Edit Your Novel course.
Partnerships beget partnerships!
How could we not work with the UK writer’s trade union, an invaluable source of advice and support at a time when it feels like writers are especially under the cosh?
We’ve collaborated for years on projects with the indomitable Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin from writing.ie – now chair of the management committee. We support the SoA’s campaigning work to protect authors in the UK parliaments, to recognise human creativity and to promote human-authored work.
We were one of the inaugural sponsors of the ADCI (Authors with Disabilities and Chronic Illnesses) Literary Prize. Its founder Penny Batchelor is a PWA alum. We are proud to continue this sponsorship as part of our ongoing commitment to encourage greater positive representation of disability in literature and to support writers with disabilities and chronic illnesses.
We also offer discounts to SoA members on some of our advanced fiction courses.
