CCB Magazine

The Reader Berlin connects writers with each other and with other artists. What started as a manuscript assessment service has now become a creative hub for authors, bookworms and other creatives. The founder, Victoria Gosling, is our player of the week (Part 13).

CCB Magazine: Victoria, who are you and what do you do?

Victoria Gosling: I’m a writer, an editor, and a Berliner for the last seven years or so. About five years ago, I founded The Reader Berlin. It began as manuscript assessment service, offering feedback and advice to authors, and then I started a workshop… these days, we can have seven or eight evening and daytime courses running at any one time, along with one-day and weekend workshops in scriptwriting, poetry, fiction, the novel, creative non-fiction, you name it. Over 20 award-winning authors have tutored for us. Alongside writing workshops, we assess authors’ work for them, provide editing services, do copywriting, and offer corporate training – particularly in the fields of creativity and writing.

CCB Magazine: You also host literary events.

Victoria Gosling:Yes, I want to connect writers, not only with each other but with other artists. The Reader had a weekend writing festival in a ruined fort up by the Polish border a couple of years ago, and each month we host a Sunday Salon with guest authors, readings and a live-writing competition. Recently, we’ve started partnering with bookshops across Europe to offer writing weekends. We went to Prague and Copenhagen last year, and have plans to visit Brussels and Stockholm this spring.

I came to Berlin on the recommendation of a professional sword swallower who I met at a meditation retreat

CCB Magazine: Tell us a little about your path.

Victoria Gosling:I came to Berlin on the recommendation of a professional sword swallower who I met at a meditation retreat. That’s a Berlin story, isn’t it? She told me that being in Berlin felt like being in love, that when she was here she had that floating feeling. Basically, I am an economic migrant. I needed to live somewhere where I could work two or three days a week, rent my own apartment, and spend the rest of my time writing. I had written one book and been lucky enough to get an agent and win a small prize, but not a publishing deal.

CCB Magazine: When did you write your first novel?

Victoria Gosling:That first novel was written in a shed on my parents’ farm. At weekends I did care work to pay off the debts I had accumulated in London. I write slowly and when that novel was finished I had to decide where to go next. In the UK, I did not know how I could earn enough money to live and have the time to do the only thing I really wanted to do: write.  I didn’t fall in love with the Berlin immediately. That first winter it was so cold, I wore a hat to bed. I didn’t know anyone… I was here a few years before I got The Reader going. It has given me so much. I’ve got to meet and work with the most fascinating people. I had no business plan, no idea what was out there. I just opened the door, and as a writer sometimes you need to do that.

Workshop of The Reader Berlin, © Victoria Gosling.

CCB Magazine: What do you hope to achieve with The Reader Berlin?

Victoria Gosling:In her novel This Book Will Save Your Life, A.M. Holmes writes, “Sometimes you can do things for others that you can't do for yourself.” All the services we offer to writers are those I would have benefitted from in my early years in Berlin. There is a whole creative writing industry, and people pay thousands for masters’ programmes. If you have the money and the time, that’s great. But I think a good workshop, insightful feedback, perhaps some mentoring, and advice about getting published can do the job, while letting writers go their own way. Sometimes you just need to find that one person who understands what you’re trying to do. Occasionally, I can be that person, more often I can help people find that person. When I started doing writing and creativity workshops for businesses, I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. A lot of the people I work with in those situations don’t write at all, apart from emails, and they may not think they are creative. It’s amazing what you can do in a day is all I’ll say.

CCB Magazine: You are from Berlin: What does that mean to you and your work?

Victoria Gosling:I’m from the country. In most cities I’ve lived in, I feel overwhelmed. I have no room to think.  But I have two homes now. Wherever my family is, and Berlin. I love to admire her different faces. I love drifting around between the kneipes and Grünewald, Thai Park, Görli, the Landwehrkanal, the libraries, concert halls, trödlmarkts, hunting traces of the famous artists who once lived here, relaxing with a beer am See in the summer. Berlin is distracting and that’s not always good for my work, but on the other hand there is a respect here given to artists which allows for so much freedom.

I want Berlin to prove other cities like New York, London and Paris wrong

CCB Magazine: If you were given a free wish: How should Berlin develop in the future?

Victoria Gosling:My whole life, I feel like I’ve been arriving in beautiful places only for people to tell me things aren’t like they used to be. There’s something immoral about nostalgia. Yet, Berlin has changed, for better and for worse.

CCB Magazine: Would you still come here?

Victoria Gosling:Maybe not. The rents… Maybe I’d go to Leipzig instead, or Bucharest. There’s always a new Shangri-La and that’s how it should be. Still, I have days when I am less optimistic. Cities have always experienced reversals of fortune, depending on the industries upon which they are based. But we are living in a new world now, with different rules. The other day, I read an article by Rebecca Solnit about San Francisco, and how the knock-on effect of the tech industries has impacted the city. It’s no longer the place where you go wearing flowers in your hair, not unless you’ve also got a wallet full of hard cash. It’s the worst-case scenario of what could happen here in Berlin.

The Reader Berlin © Victoria Gosling

Victoria Gosling:Still, there is a sense that the city is responsive to its inhabitants. I was amazed when the vote about the development at Tempelhof air-field went against the plans and it didn’t happen. I suppose my dream would be for Berlin to continue to foster creativity and entrepreneurship, for its spirit of shrug and let-live to survive. It would be nice to see the city in the black, for it to thrive, without leaving the people who live on low-incomes behind, or driving them out. New York, London and Paris seem to think it can’t be done. I want Berlin to prove them wrong.

CCB Magazine: What do you plan for your future?

Victoria Gosling:I came here to write another book. It’s taken me a little longer than I planned, but I am not too far off now. I know too many novelists now to take myself seriously when I swear I’ll never write another. But I long for the outdoors, the mountains and the open road, something to balance all the hours I’ve spent staring into the screen. It might be time for a new life, or just a long holiday, I don’t know, more adventures anyway, and The Reader Berlin is a good vehicle for adventures. I’d also like to think that regardless of what I end up doing, The Reader will continue to support emerging writers and help people to tell their stories. I think about it sometimes, and I’m amazed at how it has grown. It exists without me now, it breathes by itself. I’ll always do my best to make sure it has enough oxygen to keep going, whatever happens.

CCB Magazine: Thank you and stay in touch.

Profile of Victoria Gosling on Creative City Berlin

Meet Victoria Gosling at the EU Info Day on 22 April 2016