One of the creative writing workshops conducted at Katara.
Doha: The Cultural Village Foundation (Katara) has announced it will conduct a “Writing Children’s Stories” workshop starting on January 24.
The workshop comprises eight sessions to be conducted during Sundays for female participants and Tuesdays for male participants from 4 pm to 6 pm at the Katara Library’s headquarters for Arabic Fiction, Building 32.
This first-of-its-kind training workshop conducted by Katara is aimed at participants aged 18 years and above who wish to learn the art of writing stories for children. Those who want to participate in the workshop must register via e-mail: workshop@kataranovels.com.
Sheikha bint Hamad bin Ahmed Al Thani, the supervisor of the “Writing Children’s Stories” workshop, said that this activity comes as a continuation of the training courses launched by the Katara Prize for Arabic Novel to teach the art of creative writing.
The initiative has trained more than 700 participants so far, and The Promising Novelist Program, which launched in February 2019, is based on training talented girls on creative writing.
In October last year, five winners were crowned at the end of the first annual program. Katara Publishing House will print and market the works of the five winners during the current year 2021.
As part of the Summer 2020 activities, Katara launched a short story competition that received wide participation from all Arab countries. Sheikha bint Hamad explained that the short story is one of the literary forms most capable of expressing reality, the problems of life, and their interactions, thus developing the mind and gaining new solutions to its problems.
Short story writing also develops the imagination. It is important to pay attention to the development of narrative talents among young people interested in writing stories for children, she added.
She pointed out that the workshop will conclude by selecting the best story models for the participants and printing them in Katara Publishing House.
The “Writing Children’s Stories” workshop is supervised by writer Youssef Baalouj, an Algerian cultural and media activist born in 1987. He has worked in television, theatre, cinema, and media. He has published five books, including on theatre and children’s literature.
Baalouj won many prizes in Algeria and other Arab countries, including first place in the children’s short story competition about the Prophet’s biography, organized by Katara last year.
During the same year, he won The Silver Shield of the Qanbar International Competition for Children’s Literature in Iraq. He won first place in the Theatrical Text Competition for Children of the Arab Organization for Theater in the United Arab Emirates.
