The menu
Whether it’s creativity in your writing or inspiration as a wordsmith: a slower pace and an inspiring space, I am bound to have something to satiate.
Find your flavour.
QISSA
A MEMBERSHIP FOR ASPIRING AUTHORS AND WRITERS.
DOORS TO NEW MEMBERS OPEN SUMMER 2024
A Sanctuary for Stories. A community where you can find flow and flourish as a writer. The membership is designed to support you not only to gain confidence as a non-fiction writer but to build a practice that will help progress your writing aspirations.
Inside Qissa you’ll find a safe space to unearth your authentic voice as a writer and find the tools that can help make your writers’ dreams a reality.
WITH SLOW WRITING AT ITS HEART…
I then, I now
CRAFTING A LITERARY MEMOIR WITH
SUMAYYA USMANI & MEGHAN FLAHERTY
A live 6-week online course to help you write your literary memoir. Coming in 2025.
Join the waitlist to find out more soon. This course will be available by application only.
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Sumayya Usmani is an award-winning author born and raised in Pakistan, now living in Glasgow. She is a Scottish Book Trust Next Chapter Awardee (2021) and the award-winning author of two cookbooks and one memoir. Sumayya has just finished a MLitt in Creative Writing at University of Glasgow and is starting the DFA Creative Writing starting in October 2024. Sumayya offers freelance editing and mentors writers as well as runs an online writer's membership community called Qissa. Her literary interests include culinary displacement, nostalgia and the erasure of belonging through colonisation and the Partition of India.
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Meghan Flaherty is the author of Tango Lessons (Mariner).She has an M.F.A. from Columbia University in literary nonfiction. Her essays have appeared in VQR, O, The Oprah Magazine, The Iowa Review, Psychology Today, Parents, and online at the New York Times, The Paris Review, Slate, and elsewhere. Her essay “Ode to Gray” was included among the notable mentions in 2019’s Best American Essays. She lives with her partner and their two small boys in rural Scotland, and enjoys purchasing vegetables in Romance languages around the world. Meghan teaches Creative Writing at University of Glasgow, and privately. In 2022, she was awarded an Ignite Fellowship by the Scottish Book Trust.
MENTORING
Nurtured, NOURISHED AND NOTED ARE THREE opportunitIES to work one-on-one together ON YOUR WRITING PROJECT.
Designed to bring change into your writing skills and well-being, Nurtured is my 12 week mentoring programme, created entirely bespoke. Whether it’s becoming a better writer, learning the art of crafting words and flavours together, creating a personal cookbook or non-fiction book proposal or key issues when it comes to writing or planning your book. The beauty of Nurtured is that it’s tailored to you and you get my full focus. 12 weeks of editing, planning and mindset advice with 1-hour mentoring sessions each fortnight. Nurturing your writing project to receive the care it needs.
If you’d like something shorter, I offer 1 hour calls, Noted - and if you want to work together for 6 months but less intensely, I offer Nourished.
Wordsmith
A 21-day email and audio course to find your writer’s voice.
Discover your writer’s voice with my 21-day audio email course. Created to help you find your unique voice, one that you can be proud of. Your voice is important and deserves to be heard. Wordsmith enables you to uncover it, peppered with writing tips and exercises to unlock your creativity. Combining writing and self-exploration, find comfort with your words and uncover those shimmering images, through 21 days of creative evolution. Join now for instant access to the email course.
BREWED
A 4-week course to craft your perfect cookbook proposal.
I believe recipes have story at the heart of them and your book proposal is your chance to recount and refine those stories. During Brewed I’ll teach you to create a cookbook proposal that takes your cuisine and transforms it into a compelling proposal. Divided into 4 sections, we’ll cover your entire dream-to-draft plan, breaking it down and working on it step-by-step. From building a platform to how to pitch to a publisher, Brewed will help you to create a tantalising cookbook proposal full of flavour.
DRAFTCRAFT
WRITE THE FIRST DRAFT OF YOUR BOOK IN THIS INTENSIVE 120 DAY LIVE MASTERMIND
Coming soon.