BUDDING authors are being invited to attend a weekend of workshops in Dunster this summer which will help to support the village’s new winter festival.

A percentage of the weekend’s ticket sales will go to help fund Dunster Winter Festival, which takes place during the weekend of December 7 and 8.

The festival is a successor to Dunster by Candlelight, which took place for the final time shortly before last Christmas.

The ‘writer’s weekend’ on August 10 and 11 will provide tips for anybody who has thought about writing, publishing, or creating their own hand-bound book but did not know how.

Editor, designer, and author of several books Terence Sackett will guide writers through the maze of finding and approaching a literary agent, publishing on Amazon and Kindle, and formatting text for a printer.

Workshop participants will receive tips on creating professional-looking layouts using publishing software, and how to work with illustrations and illustrators, which can be daunting for newbie writers.

Other workshops will cover poetry writing and an introduction to bookbinding, which will be taken by Watchet-based author, artist, and teacher Jan Martin.

Ms Martin, who has degrees from the University of the West of England in multi-disciplinary printmaking and illustration, will teach participants how to get started with poems, and how to use metaphors and adjectives to express abstract ideas, and will show writers and artists how to create bespoke folded pamphlet style and decorative Japanese stab-bound books and sketchbooks.

Tickets for the ‘Writers’ Weekend’ workshops are available online here.