Writing our way through: Viktor and The Esther Project
Hi, I’m Amanda,
I’m a prize-winning novelist, creative writing tutor and workshop facilitator based in Leamington Spa. I am the author of four novels, Black Rock, A Kind of Eden, (Serpent’s Tail) Fortune and Look at You, published by Peepal Tree Press.
I’ve spent the past few years teaching creative writing in universities, in literary organisations and community settings, including as a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at Exeter College University of Oxford. I teach regularly for Arvon and work with writers at all stages of their creative journeys.
My workshops are about finding your voice, developing your ideas and making fiction from your life. I want writers to feel supported enough to take risks, curious enough to experiment, and confident enough to believe they have a story worth telling.
The Novel
Viktor, my fifth novel, is set between London and Bangkok. Vivianne Chartres leaves her husband in the UK and travels to Thailand with her three-year-old son, Viktor. But on their second day in Bangkok, she loses him in the vast, chaotic maze of Chatuchak Market. A search begins.
Told through Vivianne’s first-person, unreliable narration, the novel draws the reader into her increasingly fractured perception of reality. Only in the final pages does the full extent of her trauma become clear: Vivianne has been living in a state of delusion, believing that her three-year-old son is still alive, when in fact he died some months earlier.
Viktor explores the fragile boundary between reality and perception, and asks how love, memory and trauma can shape the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.
The Esther Project
Alongside the development of Viktor, I will run eleven creative writing workshops with women at The Esther Project, a Leamington Spa organisation supporting women facing trauma, crisis, domestic abuse, homelessness and other significant life challenges.
The project provides safe spaces, practical and emotional support, counselling and opportunities for women to rebuild confidence and independence.
Through poetry and prose exercises, prompts and discussion, participants will draw on their experiences, memories and imaginations to develop their writing and find their voices. I will share my creative practice and the developing process of Viktor, creating a dialogue between my work and theirs.
The workshops will offer a supportive space to explore creativity, build confidence and have their voices heard, culminating in a live reading and a printed anthology of their work.
Lianne Kirkman founder of the Esther Project
"We had such great feedback after your last session, so it would be great if you could come back. It would be also be fantastic if you get the grant too to do the series or workshops - that would be brilliant."
Testimonial
One of the best courses I have ever done.
(workshop participant)
Amanda is a fantastic teacher. I’ve learned so much and feel ready to continue my writing.
(workshop participant)
Fantastically useful and thrilling course. Totally inspiring and couldn’t be beat.
(workshop participant)
Praise for Amanda as workshop leader
Amanda Smyth writes like a descendant of Jean Rhys. Black Rock is a powerful cocktail of heat and beautiful coolness, written in a heady, mesmerising yet translucent prose which marks Smyth out as a born novelist.
(Ali Smith-novelist)
Her writing is as lushly beautiful as the landscape she describes - it's the kind of novel that leaves your head filled with gorgeous pictures.
(Kate Saunders, The Times)
Smyth has a genius for atmosphere
(Ruby Eastwood, The Irish Times)