On the first Faber Academy course in Geneva

I was dreading the Faber Academy because I had no idea whether what I had to say about writing would be interesting or relevant, but I need not have worried. The last four days have been inspiring and humbling. The course attracted a group of interested and engaged participants, more than half flew in from outside Geneva. In the beautiful space of the Société de Lecture in the Old Town, in a book-lined room with exquisite furniture, we talked about writing other lives, writing across language, culture and race, writing across class. We all agreed that the key ingredients in "writing other" were imagination and compassion. We examined the texts of writers who had managed this particularly well, among them Kazuo Ishiguro, Vladimir Nabokov, Aboubaker Diop and Mavis Gallant ... and because I believe that we learn from failure as well as from success, we examined the work of a number of writers, many of them contemporary writers, whose texts could have been great had they not been content to rely on stereotypes.

We did a lot of critiquing ... I particularly enjoyed listening to the writers read their own words and feeling the wealth of experience in that small space. I had suggested the writer Christopher Hope as a co-tutor, and if I do say so myself, he was an inspired choice. I am not sure I know any living writer who has written so wonderfully, and so lovingly, about such a wide range and variety of people, he has written about pretty much anyone who has been caught up in his voracious appetite for stories.

You have heard me talk before about how much I love people and how much I love getting to know people beyond the dreariness of small talk, how much I treasure the connections I make in my life. I don't know whether all ten participants will go on to publish their work, but I can tell you that I came away feeling that I had made connections with good people, really good people, who wanted to write, not for glory and immediate gratification, but because they thought writing would help them better understand the world and their place in it. In the last four days, I understood the pleasure of teaching and reaching out to people whose minds are open and eager for knowledge and experience. Thanks to the Geneva 10, my world expanded.