Attention Practices: a two-hour writing workshop with Julia Bell

By: HAA Admin

We live in an economy built to fragment our focus — every scroll, ping and feed engineered to harvest what little attention we have left. This workshop asks a quietly radical question: what happens when we choose to pay attention on purpose?

Over two hours, writer and Birkbeck professor Julia Bell will guide you through practical exercises in looking, listening and writing closely. Drawing on the ideas in her books Radical Attention (Peninsula Press) and Between the Lines (Simon & Schuster), and on Simone Weil’s idea of attention as a moral and democratic act, the session moves between short readings, guided writing prompts and open discussion. You’ll leave with new work on the page and a set of tools for reading and writing more attentively.

No experience necessary — just bring something to write with and a willingness to slow down.

Julia Bell is a writer and Professor of New Writing at Birkbeck, University of London, where she co-directs the Centre for New Writing and has taught creative writing for nearly thirty years. Her books include the essay Radical Attention (Peninsula Press), the memoir-in-verse Hymnal (Parthian), and Between the Lines (Simon & Schuster). Radical Attention, first published in 2020, is reissued in September 2026 with a new introduction by Grace Blakeley. Her work centres on Simone Weil’s idea of attention as a moral and democratic practice, and ranges across fiction, essay and poetry. She writes the Substack Between the Lines and lives in London.