At our meeting on 13 July Shaniqua Benjamin will talk about her writing and about being Croydon’s first poet laureate. Besides being an accomplished performer and poet, Shaniqua is a skilled consultant and facilitator, and it should be a very interesting meeting.
We will meet in our new regular venue, St Mildred’s Centre, and the meeting starts at 7.30
Our friends in the West, Sutton Writers, are celebrating their fortieth anniversary, and will launch a special Ruby Anthology as part of Carshalton Festival. The Book Launch is on 2nd July at 7:30pm to 8:30pm at Cryer Arts (39 High St, Carshalton SM5 3BB), in the Marquee at the back of the venue.
They have invited us to go along, and we will be represented: if you would like to be there too, please RSVP to suttonwriters@yahoo.com.
Nikki will host the Saturday morning meeting on 27 June. Meet in the Clocktower Café in Katharine Street at 10.30. Bring a short piece to read for feedback or just come and chat!
I have updated my list of current writing competitions…
Our first Saturday morning meeting was judged a great success, so we hope to make it a regular thing.
The second one was on 30 May. We met for a coffee and chat in the Clocktower Café in Katharine Street 10.30. Look out for news of the next Saturday meeting.
On 11 May the award-winning writer Emma Darwin, author of The Mathematics of Love and A Secret Alchemy gave us an interesting talk about writing historical fiction. As well as publishing novels and well-received non-fiction, Emma teaches creative writing, in which she has a PhD. Read more about her and her work here. Her latest novel The Bruegel Boy was published in November, when it was the Times book of the month. The novel is a profound exploration of humanity, love, brotherhood, vocation, loss and reconciliation: she talks about the challenge of writing it here.
Members might also be interested in her longstanding blog This Itch of Writing, on Substack: https://emmadarwin.substack.com/. It’s a real treasure trove of discussion and advice.
I have updated my list of current writing competitions…
There has been a muted response to Writer of the Month this time round, and the committee has decided that a different format may fit more easily with our aims.
So we are working to set up a replacement for it – Writers’ Forum – which will provide members with an opportunity to submit a piece of writing for peer review. This will replace the competitive emphasis of Writer of the Month with a collegiate, developmental and productive one.
Look out for further news!
The winning piece in our March Writer of the Month competition was Little Weed, by Peter Hankins.
You can read all the entries here:
