This year is Arvon's 40th birthday

There's so much to do this year. We're 40 and we feel fresher than ever. For the first time, if you book a course with us, you get a unique booking number which gives you an instant passport to submit a manuscript to us for consideration by publishers John Murray and the literary agents Capel & Land. Details of this will be provided with the confirmation of your booking.

Arvon has been providing the UK with first class and extra-ordinary creative writing experiences since 1968. Back then, poets John Moat and John Fairfax probably didn't know what they were letting themselves in for. Concerned about the provision for writing poetry in schools, they invited local school children to join them and Ted Hughes for the first ever Arvon course. That was 1968. Their first cooked meal was Poet's Stew.

40 years later and cooking and eating together is still integral to the Arvon experience - and it's not just poetry that we offer. We have courses for beginners in all genres, playwrights, novelists, short story writers, graphic novelists, comedy writers, nature writers, food writers, creative non-fiction writers and more besides. We now run our courses from four beautiful, historic houses around the UK. Two of our houses belonged to writers Ted Hughes and John Osborne.

Arvon is part of the fabric of literature and literary culture in the UK. Join Arvon Friends, visit our houses, attend our Birthday event, book a course, write, write, write...