The Taj Mahal of the North

  • Emma Sweeney (UK)
    workshops and literary reading

    Yerevan, Armenia
    July-August, 2011

Emma Sweeney carried out workshops on writing in different art and educational centers in Yerevan. She also held a literary reading of her novel ‘The Taj Mahal of the North’ at the ‘Espaces Centre de Formation’ (Yerevan).

The main goal of her Free Fiction Writing workshop was to help emergency writers in Armenia to find ways to use their own life experiences as a spring board for writing fiction. Emma shared some of her own work with the audience, showed some techniques that she had used in her own works, and organized writing exercises.

During her seven-week writer-in-residence program, Emma Sweeney completed a full redraft of her new novel ‘My Broken Twin’.


Emma Sweeney (UK) studied English at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge University and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Her teaching and writing career has taken her as far afield as South East Asia, Japan and India. As well as her position in London, she also runs creative writing programs at Cambridge University, the Open University and Foundation for International Education. Emma has won various prizes for her first novel, including an Arts Council Writer’s Award, a Royal Literary Fund Bursary, and writer’s residencies in Cambridge, Dublin and Barcelona. She is also an award-winning short story writer, recently being awarded a Byrdcliffe Artist in Residence fellowship as well as being shortlisted for both the prestigious International Fish Prize and the Asham Award (Britain’s foremost short story prize for women writers).