Donna Ferguson

Congratulations to Donna Ferguson, an award-winning journalist, for having her work published in The People's Friend magazine and for becoming a runner-up in a short-story competition!

On 16 January, Donna was interviewed by Cambridge105 Radio Breakfast to talk about her piece of work that was published in The People's Friend and her time studying an Adult Education course at Hills Road.

Last year, Donna took an Introduction to Creative Writing course at Hills Road. Taught by Wenyan Lu, she was set a piece of homework where she had to write a story with the direction of “how we met”. Rather than creating a traditional love story, Donna wrote a piece about how she met her daughter.

“We were set homework, it was Wenyan Lu’s course, and the homework was: write a story of how we met. I think most people would assume you’d write a romance story, about how you met your partner, but I just started thinking about how did I actually meet my daughter, because its very difficult to pinpoint the exact moment you met your child as a woman.”

This was only Donna’s second homework, one which she read aloud in front of the class. After receiving positive feedback, she felt that she had nothing to lose and submitted the work to the national magazine she is now published in.

Donna went on to talk about how liberating it felt to write creative works, rather than her usual journalistic material, in her conversation on Cambridge105 Radio Breakfast.

“That was something that Wenyan Lu made me realise, is that a lot of fiction is based on facts, on the experiences of life, and I sort of knew that, but it was just the feeling that you can write about yourself and your experiences, but from a fictional point of view [...] She was a very inspiring teacher and I highly recommend the course.”

Congratulations Donna for all your success! We’re so glad to hear that you relished your time at Hills Road and that taking part in the Introduction to Creative Writing has helped you so much. We wish you all the best with your newfound passion for creative writing!