An Xmas message

Words And Women is enormously proud of all it has achieved this year. There have been many firsts: our first anthology (shortlisted for a Saboteur Award), our first short film (directed by Jean Hogg), our first garden festival with specially commissioned art works from Katy Armes and Clare Jarrett, our first reading event in Cambridge (thanks to Anthea Morrison and Leigh Chambers for organising), our first Arts Council England grant for four special commissions about women and place (mentored by W&W and poet Hannah Walker and theatre director Adina Levay). We held a Women’s Day event which was so busy we had to turn people away at the door. We’ve appeared at Wymondham Words, the Norfolk & Norwich Festival, and Sound & Vision. We brought the celebrated authors Meg Rosoff and Jane Harris to Norwich to read and talk about their work. We ran writing workshops for girls at the Hewett School, Norwich. We launched our second prose competition for women writers in the East of England and are currently judging the entries with novelist Sarah Ridgard. All this achieved with a lot of hard work, limited resources, and plenty of in kind support from The Forum Norwich, Unthank Books and the Writers’ Centre Norwich. Also we have had considerable input from women writers, musicians and artists and other good sorts who have given up their time to take part in our events, help run them and publicise them (special thanks to Guinevere Glasfurd-Brown here for her brilliant tweeting). We have two wonderful new interns: Isabelle King and Meghan Douglass-Ellis. Blog posts have been written for us. Cakes have been baked for us. Thank you!

We have learnt a lot. By saying YES to practically everything this year we’ve discovered what we’re good at and what not, what we should do more of and what we should never do again! We are slowly learning what it is that women writers in this region want from us and what we realistically can offer them. We are planning our 2015 activities carefully with all this in mind. Please keep visiting this blog for our news. The next item to be posted will be early January when we will announce the results of our prose competition. Who will win first prize?

Until then we wish you a merry Christmas and all the very best for the New Year.

Bel and Lynnex