How to Build a House – On Writing the Home

In this workshop, you will learn what the home can hold for your writing and how to write about it in a way that elevates it from beyond mere setting.

A black and white photo showing an Asian woman with long black hair. Her head is slightly turned to her left and she is looking off-camera. She is wearing a black top and behind her is a plain background.

The home is a key archetype in literature. Common yet complex, it is often intricately tied to other areas of life such as our roots, heritage, identity, and memory. The home can also become a character in our work or act as a tool to explore our characters’ psychologies. Through this workshop, we will explore how to unlock the full potential of the home in our writing.

What will you do in the workshop?

We’ll discuss a range of readings across literature and philosophy that touch upon the concept of home. Following these discussions and reflections on the home, there will be an opportunity through writing exercises for you to craft a house in prose.

What can participants expect?

Using example texts, we will learn what the home can do in our writing and how to put that in practice. Handouts will be provided in advance with readings from Gaston Bachelard, Virginia Woolf, and others.

Who is this opportunity for?

This workshop is suitable for prose writers of all levels who want to develop their craft.   


About Developing Tutors 

Developing Tutors offers new and established writers their first opportunity to teach a creative writing workshop with enhanced support from lesson planning to delivery. Following an open call in April 2024, Spread the Word selected 7 workshop ideas from over 40 applications. The workshops will run up to February 2025 and if successful, there will be another open call in 2025. 

Bursary Places 

We have 5 free bursary places for each Developing Tutors workshop available to those who cannot afford the price of a ticket, allocated on a first come first served basis. Please email [email protected] stating which event you would like to attend for free and if we are able to offer you a place we will. Due to availability, we can only accept one bursary request per person for the series of workshops.

Access Notice 

  • If you require BSL interpretation to take part, please email us at [email protected] by Monday 10 July and we’ll try to secure BSL interpretation for you. Spread the Word will cover this cost.

  • We’ll send through any reading seven days in advance. We can create adapted handouts to writers attending our workshops and events by request.

  • If you have additional access needs or questions, please email us on [email protected]

About Rachel Fung

Rachel Fung


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Rachel Fung grew up between the islands of Borneo and Singapore. She studied law at King’s College London and went on to practice as an intellectual property lawyer. Her work has appeared in literary magazines and journals across China, Singapore, the USA, and the UK, as well as anthologies such as The Second Link: An Anthology of Malaysian and Singaporean Writing.

Through her writing, Rachel enjoys exploring the limits of self and reality. She is currently pursuing a Masters in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) at the University of East Anglia and is working on her first novel.