The end is near...

We're talking about the end of 2016, of course. The last meeting of this year will take place on the 15th of December at St Sidwells. Hoping to see you there!

Happy Holidays!

Stepan the Bear

Our member John E Clarke, author of The Ancestral Warrior, received a message from two Australian readers who found a real-life counterpart of Boris, the friendly bear who is a main character of this fantasy novel (click on the link above to read more about it).

They sent John an article about Stepan, the Moscow bear who lives happily with his human adoptive parents. So here is a link where you can enjoy this story too, with lots of gorgeous photos and a video too. Isn't Stepan cute?


Gloomsbury

Being Human

The College of Humanities of the University of Exeter celebrates his 2016 Being Human Festival with a variety of interesting events that you can check here. This year, the third this festival, the only one in its genre in the UK, is themed with 'Hope and Fear'. It will touch a wide range of subjects, from the football ground to Syrian culture, including a workshop on Golding's Lord of the Flies. Have a look at the programme in the link above and enjoy!

Andrew Marr's Paperback Heroes

Festival of Local Writing in Cullompton

On the 14th-15th October, The Walronds is hosting this interesting event consisting of an evening of three superb short plays staged by Patterns Theatre Company and includes an opportunity to feed back your views to the writers and directors. The plays are The Digital Age by Christine Hardy, Letting Go by John Somers, and The Wrong Apples, a comedy by our member Elizabeth Vousden. Will you miss it?

Tickets are £7 and can be obtained calling 07885 475943. The venue address is 6 Fore Street, Cullompton, EX15 1JL. Doors open at 7 pm for a 7.30 pm start and we are told there will be a bar available.

And don't forget our next meeting will take place on the 20th October at the Old Chapel Room in St Sidwells Community Centre. See you there!

Note about the meetings

Hello, fellow writers. Just a few lines to let you know that during the autumn we will be using a different room from the usual one for our meetings. The sessions taking place between the 6th October and the 1st December will be held in the Chapel Room of St Sidwells. So, if you come join us during those dates, just get into the very first room you'll find. We're looking forward to meet you!

Creative Writing Taster

Anne Marie is tipping us with information about an interesting event:

Exeter Central Library is hosting a taster session on the Foundation Degree in Creative and Professional Writing course developed by Exeter College in association with Plymouth University. It is taking place next Wednesday 6th July and tickets can be obtained at the library.

For more information, check the library's notice at their twitter account, or simply pop into the place and ask. You know you're going anyway...

Happy writing.

Free Workshop by Lucy Bell

Date:
Saturday 25 June
Time:
11:00 - 13:00

Award-winning writer, Lucy Bell, co-founder of Documental Theatre, will take you through the process of using documentary source material as a starting point for writing. Working with transcripts of research, we will talk about rhythms and figures of speech and how to create a sense of energy, character and dramatic motivation in a short spoken word piece.

Audience: Suitable for newcomers to writing or for more experienced writers.
Expect to leave with a new character buzzing around your head...

Cost: Free Event

Bookings: Tickets can be booked at the library

Partner: The Bike Shed Theatre

I haven't been able to find out whether this is at the library or at the Bikeshed. If you are interested, you'll have to find out when you book your place at the library.

Forensic Science course for free!

The University of Strathclyde is offering an online Introduction to Forensic Science course.  So, if you like to write detective stories, police procedure stuff, or similar, and want to make sure that your depictions are true to life, follow the link and take a look. It covers an interesting range of evidence types, and it's bound to be very interesting.  But hurry up if you want to sign up, because the course starts on the 18th of April!

New Year, New Projects

Hello again! Looking forward to next meeting? So are we! It's going to be on Thursday 18th and we expect to have a lot of fun as usual. We are also planning something exciting... our very first anthology as a collective of authors. It is very early still to give concrete details, but we want it to be a collection of short stories by our regular attendants, so it will contain a handsome variety of works. To learn more, keep an eye on the blog. Or better, come and join us.

Meanwhile, our colleague Sarah Bartrum has published her latest novel, called Keep Them Safe, a gripping thriller that you'll surely appreciate and which is available through Amazon.


To see more of Sarah's work, please visit her website at: http://www.sarahbartrum.com