One must be an inventor to read well … Then there is creative reading as well as creative writing.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Nicola ran a Creative Reading Group from 2006 to 2014 focusing on different regions of the world. Every year, we read 9 books from the selected region by both men and women writers. The regions covered were:

• Year 1 (2006-2007) – East Asia: China and Japan
• Year 2 (2007-2008) – Africa and the Caribbean
• Year 3 (2008-2009) – Americas (North, Central and South)
• Year 4 (2009-2010) – Eastern Europe and the Middle East
• Year 5 (2010-2011) – Western Europe
• Year 6 (2011-2012) – The Self (Personal Development)
• Year 7 (2013-2014) – Asia & the Pacific

If you would like to receive the reading lists, please send us a message via the contact page.

What is Creative Reading?

It may seem unusual to think of reading as a creative process, since we usually approach reading as a way to take in an author’s ideas and to interpret, reproduce or reflect on them. Although this is an important literary exercise, reading can also be a creative process, whereby we develop and express our own ideas in relation to what the author is saying. We can imagine how what we are reading relates to life, either at a personal level or in a wider context, and we can create connections between the story and our own experiences. In this way, reading becomes a creative process that guides us towards new ways of thinking about and understanding the world.