Creative Bridges Conference
‘Rethinking Travel Writing for the Anthropocene’ - a workshop as part of Lapidus International Annual Creative Bridges Conference
The conference will be held online, on the 13th and 14th of September 2026
The workshop is on the 13 September 2026 at 2.50pm
Friday Morning Pages
A relaxed Friday meet up to take a breath and benefit from a guided focused writing session.
Where: Penarth Library Maker Space
When: Every Friday Morning
10.00am – 11am
No booking needed
Fee: £10 at the door (card or cash)
Friday Morning Pages
A relaxed Friday meet up to take a breath and benefit from a guided focused writing session.
Where: Penarth Library Maker Space
When: Every Friday Morning
10.00am – 11am
No booking needed
Fee: £10 at the door (card or cash)
Friday Morning Pages
A relaxed Friday meet up to take a breath and benefit from a guided focused writing session.
Where: Penarth Library Maker Space
When: Every Friday Morning
10.00am – 11am
No booking needed
Fee: £10 at the door (card or cash)
An evening of poetry and music with Sophie Buchaillard and friends
Poetry meets performance in this intimate evening marking the release of Sophie Buchaillard’s debut collection, Painting Over the Cracks. Blending personal experience with poetic insight, Sophie’s poetry traces a journey through trauma, motherhood, and healing, where community, friendship, and creative expression offer ways to mend what lies beneath the surface.
Sophie will be joined by special guests: award-winning poet Mab Jones and folk singer Siobhan McCrudden. Together with these three artists, we invite you to a night that celebrates resilience and the strength found in sharing stories.
***
Painting Over the Cracks is novelist Sophie Buchaillard’s poetry debut. Inspired by her life, this collection explores the healing power of expression, friendship, and community in overcoming trauma. Split into four chronological sections, the collection travels from the anxieties of a single mother to memories of buried traumas and how unspoken shame has a way to colour every interaction, fraying family ties, and making it hard to fully engage with the world. Poetry, here, becomes a means of articulating the unspoken, claiming back a sense of community, and recognising the strength that comes from friendship without judgment.
Sophie Buchaillard: Sophie is the author of two novels and a dozen essays. Her second novel, Assimilation, was described by cultural critic Jon Gower as “thriller meets magic realism”. Her first novel, This Is Not Who We Are, was shortlisted for the Rhys Davies Trust Fiction Award and the Wales Book of the Year.
She has written extensively about the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda and also contributed essays to three collections: Woman’s Wales? about women and devolution; An Open Door: New Travel Writing for a Precarious Century, about modern travel writing; and the COVID-themed collection Together and Apart.
After attending the Hay Festival in 2023 as a Writer at Work and benefitting from the mentoring of inspiring poets, she went home and exclusively read poetry for a year. Not knowing what she was doing, she simply wrote, exploring family relationships at first, letting herself being led by the words. In that sense, she fell into poetry, and poetry wouldn’t let go. Painting Over the Cracks is the result, a debut collection about the healing power of expression, friendship, and community in overcoming trauma - its title poem was shortlisted for the International Bridport Poetry Prize in 2024.
Mab Jones: Mab is a multi-award-winning writer and performer whose work spans the UK, US, France, Ireland, and Japan. Her poetry collections include 111 Haiku for Lockdown, The Land That Grew Me (Selcouth Station Prize winner), Yubitsume, Poor Queen, and the recent mythological wetlands memoir Bog Witch. She has written for The New York Times, presented BBC poetry programmes (including two Radio 4 Pick of the Week choices), and taught at Cardiff University. Mab has received accolades including the John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry, the Aurora Prize, and a Creative Wales Award.
Siobhan McCrudden: Described as “a singer who is gifted with one of the finest voices in contemporary UK folk music”, Cardiff-based Siobhan crafts songs of intensity and sweetness, recounting personal stories whilst reflecting a vivid fascination with dark folk tales and superstitions. Raised in London to parents with Scottish and Irish roots, her vocal leanings reflect early memories of folk musicians at family gatherings and a strong desire to connect with these emotive beginnings.
Friday Morning Pages
A relaxed Friday meet up to take a breath and benefit from a guided focused writing session.
Where: Penarth Library Maker Space
When: Every Friday Morning
10.00am – 11am
No booking needed
Fee: £10 at the door (card or cash)
Friday Morning Pages
A relaxed Friday meet up to take a breath and benefit from a guided focused writing session.
Where: Penarth Library Maker Space
When: Every Friday Morning
10.00am – 11am
No booking needed
Fee: £10 at the door (card or cash)
Friday Morning Pages
A relaxed Friday meet up to take a breath and benefit from a guided focused writing session.
Where: Penarth Library Maker Space
When: Every Friday Morning
10.00am – 11am
No booking needed
Fee: £10 at the door (card or cash)
Friday Morning Pages
A relaxed Friday meet up to take a breath and benefit from a guided focused writing session.
Where: Penarth Library Maker Space
When: Every Friday Morning
10.00am – 11am
No booking needed
Fee: £10 at the door (card or cash)
Friday Morning Pages
A relaxed Friday meet up to take a breath and benefit from a guided focused writing session.
Where: Penarth Library Maker Space
When: Every Friday Morning
10.00am – 11am
No booking needed
Fee: £10 at the door (card or cash)
Friday Morning Pages
A relaxed Friday meet up to take a breath and benefit from a guided focused writing session.
Where: Penarth Library Maker Space
When: Every Friday Morning
10.00am – 11am
No booking needed
Fee: £10 at the door (card or cash)
Friday Morning Pages
A relaxed Friday meet up to take a breath and benefit from a guided focused writing session.
Where: Penarth Library Maker Space
When: Every Friday Morning
10.00am – 11am
No booking needed
Fee: £10 at the door (card or cash)
Friday Morning Pages
A relaxed Friday meet up to take a breath and benefit from a guided focused writing session.
Where: Penarth Library Maker Space
When: Every Friday Morning
10.00am – 11am
No booking needed
Fee: £10 at the door (card or cash)
Friday Morning Pages
A relaxed Friday meet up to take a breath and benefit from a guided focused writing session.
Where: Penarth Library Maker Space
When: Every Friday Morning
10.00am – 11am
No booking needed
Fee: £10 at the door (card or cash)
Writing the Menopause (Digital)
Digital course hosted by Canolfan Ty Newydd
Tuesday 3 march 2026
Tuesday 10 March 2026
Tuesday 17 March 2026
Tuesday 24 March 2026
Booking via: Tynewydd.wales
Fee: £175 per person
Morning Pages
Penarth Library Maker Space
On the mornings of the 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th of August
10.00am – 11am
Morning Pages
Penarth Library Maker Space
On the mornings of the 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th of August
10.00am – 11am
Morning Pages
Penarth Library Maker Space
On the mornings of the 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th of August
10.00am – 11am
JUST WHAT YOU NEED: A Creative Writing ‘reset’
Just What You Need: A creative writing ‘reset’ is an online writing session that takes place every Monday in June, 6-7pm
The aim of the session is to come together with other writers in a virtual room, to set some writing goals for the week ahead and work of directed prompts, to help you set a writing practise for yourself.
This session is for emerging writers needing writing prompts to work on their craft, and more experienced writers looking for help setting goals to work on a new or existing project.
The session is held online to maximise accessibility and help you slot the writing into your busy week.
Each session is £20 and you are welcome to attend one, a few or all five of them. To book, email: growritersb@gmail.com
JUST WHAT YOU NEED: A Creative Writing ‘reset’
Just What You Need: A creative writing ‘reset’ is an online writing session that takes place every Monday in June, 6-7pm
The aim of the session is to come together with other writers in a virtual room, to set some writing goals for the week ahead and work of directed prompts, to help you set a writing practise for yourself.
This session is for emerging writers needing writing prompts to work on their craft, and more experienced writers looking for help setting goals to work on a new or existing project.
The session is held online to maximise accessibility and help you slot the writing into your busy week.
Each session is £20 and you are welcome to attend one, a few or all five of them. To book, email: growritersb@gmail.com
JUST WHAT YOU NEED: A Creative Writing ‘reset’
Just What You Need: A creative writing ‘reset’ is an online writing session that takes place every Monday in June, 6-7pm
The aim of the session is to come together with other writers in a virtual room, to set some writing goals for the week ahead and work of directed prompts, to help you set a writing practise for yourself.
This session is for emerging writers needing writing prompts to work on their craft, and more experienced writers looking for help setting goals to work on a new or existing project.
The session is held online to maximise accessibility and help you slot the writing into your busy week.
Each session is £20 and you are welcome to attend one, a few or all five of them. To book, email: growritersb@gmail.com
JUST WHAT YOU NEED: A Creative Writing ‘reset’
Just What You Need: A creative writing ‘reset’ is an online writing session that takes place every Monday in June, 6-7pm
The aim of the session is to come together with other writers in a virtual room, to set some writing goals for the week ahead and work of directed prompts, to help you set a writing practise for yourself.
This session is for emerging writers needing writing prompts to work on their craft, and more experienced writers looking for help setting goals to work on a new or existing project.
The session is held online to maximise accessibility and help you slot the writing into your busy week.
Each session is £20 and you are welcome to attend one, a few or all five of them. To book, email: growritersb@gmail.com
JUST WHAT YOU NEED: A Creative Writing ‘reset’
Just What You Need: A creative writing ‘reset’ is an online writing session that takes place every Monday in June, 6-7pm
The aim of the session is to come together with other writers in a virtual room, to set some writing goals for the week ahead and work of directed prompts, to help you set a writing practise for yourself.
This session is for emerging writers needing writing prompts to work on their craft, and more experienced writers looking for help setting goals to work on a new or existing project.
The session is held online to maximise accessibility and help you slot the writing into your busy week.
Each session is £20 and you are welcome to attend one, a few or all five of them. To book, email: growritersb@gmail.com
In Conversation with Meredith Miller
In conversation with Meredith Miller - Sophie Buchaillard will be hosting the launch of Meredith Miller’s new novel Cold Grace at the Swansea Cultural Institute. Join us for an evening of literary conversations, reading and to find out more about Meredith’s new novel, set in northern New England in the early 1900s.
Cold Grace is for you if you enjoyed Where the Crawdads Sing. It is a dark historical novel defined by its frozen landscape. Both revenge tragedy and coming of age, it tells of an isolated community haunted by the ghost of its own violence.
CREATIVE WRITING @ The Pier
Penarth Pier - Ground Floor Southard Classroom
Wheelchair Accessible space
CREATIVE WRITING @ The Pier
Penarth Pier - Ground Floor Southard Classroom
Wheelchair Accessible space
CREATIVE WRITING @ The Pier
Penarth Pier - Ground Floor Southard Classroom
Wheelchair Accessible space
Writing the menopause
Despite increased mentions of the menopause in the media, there are still very few activities that address the experience itself, in an environment which facilitates creative engagement.
Over the course of five consecutive Fridays, from the 15th of November, the two-hour workshops will provide a free, flexible, and accessible experience for women who are looking for a creative activity that allows them to discuss, reflect and share their individual experiences of the menopause.
29 November 10-11.30am
6 December 10-11.30am
13 December 10-11.30am
Writing the menopause
Despite increased mentions of the menopause in the media, there are still very few activities that address the experience itself, in an environment which facilitates creative engagement.
Over the course of five consecutive Fridays, from the 15th of November, the two-hour workshops will provide a free, flexible, and accessible experience for women who are looking for a creative activity that allows them to discuss, reflect and share their individual experiences of the menopause.
29 November 10-11.30am
6 December 10-11.30am
13 December 10-11.30am
Writing the menopause
Despite increased mentions of the menopause in the media, there are still very few activities that address the experience itself, in an environment which facilitates creative engagement.
Over the course of five consecutive Fridays, from the 15th of November, the two-hour workshops will provide a free, flexible, and accessible experience for women who are looking for a creative activity that allows them to discuss, reflect and share their individual experiences of the menopause.
29 November 10-11.30am
6 December 10-11.30am
13 December 10-11.30am
Writing the menopause
Despite increased mentions of the menopause in the media, there are still very few activities that address the experience itself, in an environment which facilitates creative engagement.
Over the course of five consecutive Fridays, from the 15th of November, the two-hour workshops will provide a free, flexible, and accessible experience for women who are looking for a creative activity that allows them to discuss, reflect and share their individual experiences of the menopause.
22 November 10-11.30am
29 November 10-11.30am
6 December 10-11.30am
13 December 10-11.30am
Voyages and Vagabondage
Join Richard Gwyn (Ambassador to Nowhere, The Other Tiger) and Sophie Buchaillard (Assimilation, This Is Not Who We Are) in conversation about travel writing and cultural identity. This event is particularly suited to anyone studying Creative Writing or anyone who ever journeyed in search of belonging.
AUTHOR PANEL: Polls Apart?
Join three writers to discuss the role of fiction in exploring polarisation and the rise of the far right.
AUTHOR TALK: Crossing Boundaries
I will be visiting Rhydypenau Library on the 16th of October at 7pm, to talk about Assimilation. Come along if you are local. It would be lovely to see you there.
To book:
Book Club: Carmarthen
I will be visiting Goldstone Bookshop's Book Club on the 24th of September from 7pm, to talk about Assimilation. Come along if you are local. It would be lovely to see you there.
To book email carmarthen@goldstonebooks.co.uk or ring 01267 237236
Creative Cardiff Classroom: Travel Writing with Sophie Buchaillard
Join Sophie Buchaillard for a four-hour masterclass on travel writing, hosted by Creative Cardiff Classroom. See link for details of how to book a place.
Dr Sophie Buchaillard is the author of two novels, Assimilation and This Is Not Who We Are, which was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year. She also contributed to the travel writing collection An Open Door: New Travel Writing for a Precarious Century (Parthian), edited by Steven Lovatt. She holds a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing and taught at Cardiff University until this year. Her academic research focuses on the link between travel writing, identity and belonging.