Welcome to the Ridge
Writing round the table
Helsinki’s poetry moon festival, Runokuu, is in the last week of August. I spent it with a dozen colleagues, translating Finnish poems and listening to some of the poets. That was the perfect way to mark ten years of living in Finland. As I’d hoped, the poetry translation workshop made me think hard about aContinue reading “Writing round the table”
Same here
For Women in Translation Month, I’d like to remember a woman translator I missed by a whisker, and share her thoughts on writing. Tarja Roinila was a prolific, much-loved, and much-awarded translator into Finnish. She died in 2020, aged just 56. She’d been translating prose, poetry and philosophy, from French, German and Spanish, for halfContinue reading “Same here”
Get back to writing
Summer stretches gloriously before us. If you’re in Finland, the holidays are well underway. You won’t expect to hear from your colleagues again for the rest of this month. And if you’re elsewhere in Europe, you still have time to get yourself to Helsinki for 18 and 19 August. Why come to Helsinki? To joinContinue reading “Get back to writing”
Pitch your book
You have a great idea for a book, you’ve begun writing it, you’re sure your readers will appreciate it. You only have to convince a publisher. Where on earth do you start? I’m going to talk about non-fiction here, particularly about creative non-fiction. That means bringing ideas out of academia to a wider readership. I’llContinue reading “Pitch your book”
Revise!
“Revise and resubmit” are three words that fill academic writers with dread. My own PhD wasn’t ready when I submitted it first. Second time round, it was, because what was on the page more closely matched what was in my head. Two decades later, I remember how that process of reworking feels. Now, editing andContinue reading “Revise!”
Cover image: the ridge/harju in Jyväskylä. All photos (c) Kate Sotejeff-Wilson
Ridge Writing Retreats 