Tuesday, 23 June 2015

Ideas into Books - a Short Story



On 22nd June, I was invited to give a talk at Northants Writers' Ink, by Mike Richards, the group's Chair. Northants Writers' Ink is a creative writing group based in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, which meets every three weeks from 7-10pm.  I became a member in February this year.

For my talk Ideas into Books, I chose the format of the short story, which meant getting to the point immediately.  I talked about the three books I edited and published and how I approached writing the Grants for the Arts funding application for the first anthology Brown Eyes. I then went on to talk about the journey of those books: the launches, the poetry readings/performances and how the monthly Shangwe Poetry Nights at the Poetry Cafe, Covent Garden, London evolved.

Back-story was drip-fed at appropriate times and covered my community development work and volunteer work experiences in the 1990s that contributed towards enabling me to get to grips with a tough Arts Council bid. The 60 minute talk soon became an interactive one, which was what I was hoping for and was well received by the six group members.  I thoroughly enjoyed sharing my writing journey and thought the short story format worked particularly well.

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