Undeterred by the snow, writers from the East Midlands and beyond, gathered at Nottingham Trent University for The Writers’ Conference 2018. The Critical Poetics Research Group were delighted to be asked to work in partnership with Writing East Midlands on this important event supporting writer development in the region. Three members of our research group, Jo Dixon, Lynda Clark and Dr Dan Cordle led a series of creative-critical writing workshops designed for emerging and established writers interested in exploring new ways of writing about our contemporary world. In Writing Flight, Writing Technology and Writing Radiation participants were invited to work across different genres, including fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry. Writers who attended these workshops reported some of the successes as ‘encouraging a broader way of thinking/writing about concepts’, as providing a ‘good introduction to different writing possibilities’ and inspiring a ‘deeper line of thought […] for my characters.’