Writing Through the Arctic: Three Creative Workshops with Clara Arnaud

This month, Artica Svalbard was pleased to host a series of fully booked creative writing workshops with French author and Artica resident Clara Arnaud. Across three evenings in Longyearbyen, participants gathered to explore new ways of storytelling rooted in the Arctic landscape, local history, and the boundaries between the human and more-than-human world.

Clara returned to Svalbard this October for a second residency with Artica, continuing her work on a forthcoming book shaped by time spent in the Arctic environment. Alongside her own writing, she led a series of workshops with the local community — building on connections and conversations started during her first stay earlier in the year. Her sessions encouraged experimentation over technical precision, offering an open, inclusive space for participants of all backgrounds to engage with language, narrative, and place.

The first two sessions, held at Artica Svalbard, focused on writing beyond nature — questioning the traditional divides between science and poetry, humans and non-humans, nature and culture. Through prompts, shared readings, and informal discussion, participants were invited to write from a place of entanglement: with Arctic ecosystems, shifting climates, and personal encounters in the landscape.

The third workshop took place in collaboration with the Svalbard Museum, set within the museum’s exhibition space. The evening began with a guided tour by the museum’s researcher in historical archaeology, who introduced selected objects from the collection. Using these artefacts as inspiration, Clara led a writing session that explored how material history can carry hidden narratives — connecting imagination with the layered histories embedded in Svalbard’s past.

From historical artefacts to the presence of permafrost, these workshops invited participants to reimagine what stories the Arctic can tell — and who gets to tell them.

We warmly thank Clara Arnaud, the Svalbard Museum, and all who took part in these thoughtful sessions.