Title: Structuring a Story with Notebooks and Paper: Creative Workshop with Sally Bayley and Suzie Hanna

Date/time: Tuesday 7 October 1:30pm–4.30pm

Location: The Straw Yard

Cost: £25

Description: A hands-on workshop led by a writer/animator duo exploring how stories take shape through touch, sound and image. Working with notebooks and paper, you’ll be guided through exercises that map relationships between character, object and place, building emotional tension and texture into your storytelling. Using non-linear approaches, visual prompts and sonic cues, you’ll discover how concealment and revelation can become powerful tools for narrative structure. Ideal for writers, artists, storytellers and anyone curious about new ways to explore creative process.

Event information:

Event: Oxford Teacher Summer Seminar

Title: “Reading is a form of escape, and an avid reader is an escape artist”

Details: Performed readings from Sally’s, “The Green Lady” with reference to Girl with Dove and her forthcoming book, Pond Life.

Sally has a long-standing relationship with the Oxford Teacher Summer Seminar, giving lectures in 2018, 2019, 2023, 2024, and 2025.

Event details:

Event: CONNECTIONS performance for Mind Oxfordshire

Location: Somerville College Chapel, Oxford

Date: June 7, 2025

Post-event details:

Podcast of Sally rehearsing for the event: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/a-reading-life-a-writing-life-with-sally-bayley/id1657828937?i=1000712860498

Piano accompaniment for the performance was by Janine Wang who played: Rachmaninov Moment Musical Op.16 No.1, Schumann Träumerei from Kinderszenen Op.15 No.7, and Tchaikovsky October: Autumn Song from The Seasons.

Photo credit: Will Pennington

Janine Wang’s sheet music from the performance.

A course for writers looking for a focus.

Email Sally, sally.bayley@ell.ox.ac.uk, or Laetitia, lr@watsonlittle.com, to secure a place.

See further details on poster. Poster design by Sabrina Durmaz.

Event information:

Title: “Taking Heart through Poetry and Song”

Location: Wadham College, Chapel. Even song.

Date: 6:00pm, Sunday, March 2, 2025

Details: A Celebration of Welsh musical traditions for St David's Day
“From her narrowboat on the Thames, Sally Bayley dreams into being novels, poetry, non-fiction, essays, film, and performance art. Her passion for helping others nurture their own creativity overflows into work as a Lecturer in English at Hertford, and as an extraordinary and beloved tutor for Wadham's Sarah Lawrence Programme.” (Disclaimer: I DID NOT WRITE THIS BLURB!)

Event information:

Event title: Ars Memoriae - memory studies reading group (session 4)

Date: June 10 June, 2024, 17:15

Details: Ars Memoriae – Memory Studies Reading Group: session 4

This is a student-led group, run in partnershire with OCLW and TORCH

Monday 10 June at TORCH (Radcliffe Humanities building)

Free Event (no need to register) - see reading list below

Open to Members of the University of Oxford only; aimed at graduate students and early career researchers.

“We eat stories as cows eat fodder.”

Sally Bayley’s 'The Green Lady' is a masterpiece of creative writing. Blending fiction, history, and biography, she brilliantly explores the relationships between children and their teachers.

While the book's starting point is the inspiration of her female teachers, Bayley's story is framed both by her maternal ancestors, and other independent women (including educational suffragist Mary Neal, actress Margaret Rutherford, and poet Stevie Smith) - a common thread being how social convention and a lack of space (the 'room of one’s own’), combine to inhibit creativity,

Sally is a Lecturer in English at Hertford College, Oxford, and will be in conversation with novelist and critic Alice Jolly. The Green Lady is a stand alone novel, but can also be seen as the third in a biographical series.

Tickets (£8) available here

Sally talks with writers Joanna Kavenna and Elizabeth Lowry about their reading and writing habits at Blackwell’ s Oxford. Tickets to this free event available here.