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Varsha Seshan

The Second Person Short Story

May 31, 2025 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

We haven’t ever worked on the second-person short story, which is what made this writing workshop particularly interesting for me! I love it when I get to work with something new at a guest session! Michelle D’costa conducted a detailed session, introducing the three narrative perspectives and focussing on the second person narrator. From common […]

Filed Under: Workshops Tagged With: creative writing with children, guest session, Michelle D'costa, online creative writing programme, online workshops for children, second person short story

Lights, Camera, Action!

May 4, 2025 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

Lights, Camera, Action! was a whirlwind introduction to filmmaking, one which I thoroughly enjoyed. I know next to nothing about filmmaking, making this guest session all the more exciting for me. What an informative, detailed session it was! We began by watching a short film in French, Detour by Michel Gondry. Samina Mishra, our guest for the evening, […]

Filed Under: Workshops Tagged With: filmmaking, guest session, online creative writing programme, online workshops for children, Samina Mishra

My Year in Workshops – 2024

January 12, 2025 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

As someone who loves routine and predictability, it’s amazing how unpredictable my workshops are, each year! Teacher training workshops took me to Indapur, Goa, Satara, Talegaon, Nagpur and Beed, in addition to schools all over Pune. This also meant that I did multiple book club and writing sessions from hotel rooms and cafés, just like […]

Filed Under: Workshops Tagged With: book club, creative writing, online creative writing programme, online reading programme, online workshops for children, reading

The ABCs of Blogging

June 18, 2024 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

What an informative session we had with Anupama Dalmia! Anupama began by discussing what blogging is. From there, we went on to so much more – blog formats (including vlogs and micro-blogs), finding your niche, and starting your own free blog. She then introduced the children to SEO and the backend, showing them how easy […]

Filed Under: Workshops Tagged With: Anupama Dalmia, blogging workshop, online creative writing programme, online workshops for children

Character Design with Priyankar Gupta

May 19, 2024 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

Practice. What a difference practice makes! Right through yesterday’s guest session on character design, I marvelled at how swiftly Priyankar Gupta created his characters. Talking all the time, explaining what he was doing, he was able to draw not one, but six full forms in fifteen minutes! Characters, both human and non-human, are led by […]

Filed Under: Workshops Tagged With: art workshop, character design, guest session, online creative writing programme, online workshops for children, Priyankar Gupta

How to Rhyme Without Reason

April 21, 2024 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

How I love guest sessions! Yesterday’s workshop on nonsense verse with Anushka Ravishankar was a treat. It’s delightful how serious nonsense verse is! Full of contradictions, full of rules (of what nonsense verse is not), and full of surprises, we learned so much and wrote nonsense poems of our own too.  Essentially, nonsense writing is […]

Filed Under: Workshops Tagged With: Anushka Ravishankar, creative writing with children, guest session, nonsense verse, online creative writing programme, online workshops for children

My Year in Workshops: 2023

January 13, 2024 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

Writing sessions from the car. Book club sessions from a misal shop on the highway. Guest sessions in my dance class hall. 2023 was a year when I seemed to be juggling rather a lot, especially as my writing programmes were bursting at the seams, plus I started an in-person writers’ club at St. Mary’s […]

Filed Under: Workshops Tagged With: book club, creative writing, creative writing with children, online creative writing programme, online reading programme, online workshops for children, Writers' Club

The Diary as Story

December 6, 2023 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

In just a few weeks, yet another writing programme will come to an end! Yesterday was the third and last guest session of the season–a creative writing workshop with children’s book author Sowmya Rajendran. I love it when guests reinforce something I’ve been talking about for a while. During yesterday’s session, it was ‘write what […]

Filed Under: Workshops Tagged With: creative writing, creative writing with children, epistolary, online creative writing programme, online workshops for children, Sowmya Rajendran

Stories: Comic-Page Style

November 19, 2023 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

What a rewarding session we had with Nandita Basu! At workshops like this one, I think I learn as much as the young writers who sign up. Step by step, Nandita led us through the creation of one page of narrative that brings together text and illustration in the style of a graphic novel. We […]

Filed Under: Workshops Tagged With: creative writing with children, graphic novel, Nandita Basu, online creative writing programme, online workshops for children

Green Stuff and Nonsense

October 27, 2023 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

What a fun session we had on green writing with Bijal Vachharajani! In a single hour, we spoke of a million creatures from elephants to frogs, ferrets to spiders, lion-tailed macaques to slugs that aren’t slugs. Bijal’s workshop was a guest session at my writing programme. We’ve just reached the end of our poetry module, […]

Filed Under: Workshops Tagged With: Bijal Vachharajani, creative writing with children, guest session, online creative writing programme, online workshops for children

Art Workshop with Kripa

June 16, 2023 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

Each time a new writing programme begins, I feel it whizzes by. Twelve weeks are nearly over, and here we are, after our last guest session of the programme, an art workshop with art educator and children’s illustrator, Kripa. It was such a treat! I’ve been looking at Kripa’s art for a while, and I […]

Filed Under: Workshops Tagged With: art workshop, guest session, Kripa, online creative writing programme, online workshops for children

Non-Boring Nonfiction

May 7, 2023 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

It is always so rewarding when a guest speaker repeats something you’ve been saying at your writing programmes for a long time! Thank you, Vaishali, for this session on non-boring nonfiction, and for reiterating so many things that keep needing to be said! In November last year, I watched Vaishali Shroff conduct two sessions at […]

Filed Under: Workshops Tagged With: guest session, nonfiction workshop, online creative writing programme, online workshops for children, Vaishali Shroff

Poetry in Collaboration with Sampurna Chattarji

April 21, 2023 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

My first guest session of the season – Poetry in Collaboration – was such a success! With sixteen enthusiastic participants and one lively, energetic facilitator, the hour flew by before we knew it. Haiku, renga, nonets, free verse–we explored it all. Often, we believe that writing must be a solo activity. We have creative thoughts […]

Filed Under: Workshops Tagged With: guest session, online creative writing programme, online workshops for children, Poetry Workshop, Sampurna Chattarji

Writing Poetry

February 2, 2023 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

I’ve been conducting writing workshops for a long time, and if there’s one thing I love working with, it’s poetry. Nearly every writing programme I conduct begins with a poetry module. Why? Because it’s accessible. It’s far easier to write a poem in a week than it is to write a story in a week. […]

Filed Under: Workshops Tagged With: creative writing, creative writing with children, online creative writing programme, online reading programme, online workshops for children, poetry

Building Dramatic Characters

November 12, 2022 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

What fun we had at ‘Building Dramatic Characters’ – a guest session conducted by Neha Singh for my creative writing programme! To quote Neha, anything can be a character. Maybe even a chair talking to the moon! The strength of a character simply depends on how much you have invested in the character to make […]

Filed Under: Workshops Tagged With: drama workshop, guest session, Neha Singh, online creative writing programme, online workshops for children

Demystifying Publishing

October 30, 2022 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

One of the best things about my creative writing programmes is how much I learn on the way. For one, before each class, I research for hours. One hour of class time typically requires at least four hours of research.And for another, I invite guests to talk about a variety of subjects from science fiction […]

Filed Under: Workshops Tagged With: Andaleeb Wajid, creative writing, Demystifying Publishing, guest session, online creative writing programme

The Editor’s Perspective

June 14, 2022 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

The last guest session at this edition of my creative writing programme was with Daphne Lee, consulting editor at Scholastic Asia. It was everything I expected it to be – informative, detailed, and full of laughter. She answered questions, told us about the publishing process, and shared a manuscript with us, detailing how the editing […]

Filed Under: Workshops Tagged With: Daphne Lee, guest session, online creative writing programme

The Art of Zines

May 31, 2022 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

We just had another rewarding guest session! Niloufer Wadia, an illustrator and Urban Sketcher, covered so much ground in one short hour with my creative writing programme – you can guess what I mean from the picture above! From showing us different kinds of zines to telling us about storyboarding, she led us through the […]

Filed Under: Workshops Tagged With: guest session, illustration workshop, Niloufer Wadia, online creative writing programme

‘Mics It Up! – A Comic-Making Workshop

May 7, 2022 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again. There’s nothing like inviting guests to my writing programmes. The energy, the fun, the enthusiasm … Can you believe that every participant (except me) managed to create a comic strip during the session? Greystroke, an author, illustrator, filmmaker and entrepreneur, took us through the […]

Filed Under: Workshops Tagged With: comic making, Greystroke, guest session, online creative writing programme

My Year in Workshops: 2021

January 14, 2022 by Varsha Seshan Leave a Comment

The year 2021 was such an affirming year for me in terms of work! Since 2014, I’ve been freelancing. I’ve done workshops for children with the British Council, teacher training for Ratna Sagar, and I’ve been invited by schools and organisations to do workshops here and there. After nearly a year of the pandemic, these […]

Filed Under: Workshops Tagged With: creative writing workshops, online creative writing programme, online reading programme, online workshops for children, reading workshops

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