Our anthology writers – part 2

Louise Ells (c) Catherine Holden

Louise Ells spent her childhood beside the Ottawa River in northeastern Ontario, then combined random jobs (chef, roofer, co-pilot on a submarine) with years of travel.  She has a Creative Writing MA from Bath Spa University and is now pursuing a PhD at Anglia Ruskin University.  Her thesis comprises Lacunae, a collection of thematically linked short stories, and a critical commentary examining Alice Munro’s revision strategies in Dear Life.  She’s recently had stories published in The Masters Review and Harts & Minds. Louise’s short story Push will appear in Words And Women: Two.

Abby Erwin spent the first eighteen years of her life in India, Germany and the Czech Republic. She now lives in Norwich in a state of perpetual culture shock and is studying for an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Abby’s story The Oversight will be published in the anthology.

Melissa Fu is currently writing a collection of memoir-style pieces based on growing up in the Rocky Mountains.  In 2014, she started leading and facilitating Writing Circles, small writing groups in Cambridgeshire designed to create community and cultivate writers' voices.  Melissa’s approach to teaching writing is informed by her experiences in the classroom as well as her studies at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she earned a Masters in English Education. She welcomes writers of all levels to her workshops (melissafu.com) and also writes a weekly personal blog on various topics  (onetreebohemia.wordpress.com). Melissa’s creative non-fiction piece Mount Sanitas will be appear in the anthology.

Hannah Garrard is currently studying for an MA in biography and creative non-fiction at the UEA, where she also took her undergraduate degree in English Literature in 2005. She has worked as a teacher in East Asia and West Africa, but Norwich is a place she always seems to come back to.  Her writing has appeared in the Guardian, New Internationalist and Going Down Swinging. Her piece of creative non-fiction Did You Eat Lunch?  will feature in Words And Women: Two.

Four more writers tomorrow!

Our anthology writers

As promised we will be posting short biographies of the writers whose work has been selected to appear alongside Lora Stimson’s story – Cornflake Girl - in Words And Women’s second anthology. Lora Stimson won first prize in our prose competition and if you want to find out more about Lora see our competition page.

Biographies will be posted throughout this week and next. Congratulations to all of the following writers for their success.

Tricia Abraham is originally from the Caribbean but has lived in Cambridge for the past eleven years. She has an MA in Creative Writing and initially wrote for stage and film. She started to experiment with the short story format when she moved to the U.K. and wanted to reminisce about her cultural memories. Her story The Outside Woman will feature in Words And Women: Two.

Melinda Appleby won Country Living's Best Writer Award in 2011and saw this as a chance to change direction and focus on her writing, exploring the nature and culture of land. She gained an MA (Distinction) in Wild Writing (Essex University) in 2014. She has an essay in Est, the new book of East Anglian writing. Melinda has set up a creative writing programme, Sandlines, with fellow Words & Women writer and artist, Lois Williams. Working with the Brecklands Landscape Partnership, Sandlines will develop workshops to encourage community writing in response to nature, and connect people with their landscape memories.  Melinda’s piece of creative non-fiction Footprints On The Tideline will be published in the anthology.

Sarah Baxter returned to Colchester, the town of her birth, a decade ago after living in Australia and Scotland. Sarah has been successful with her flash fictions, which have been published in the Bridport Prize anthology, and online by InkTears and Flash500. In 2014, Sarah’s work-in-progress first novel was longlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association’s ‘Debut Dagger’ prize and went on to win A.M Heath’s ‘Criminal Lines’ competition. Sarah’s memoir The Girl I Left Behind was included in our inaugural anthology. Her short story Lucky, Lucky Girl  will feature in Words And Women: Two.

Ceridwen Edwards (aka. Satyagita) was born in Great Yarmouth in 1958. She's a practising Buddhist and writes to try and make sense of the world. She wrote her first book when she was five, 'Wendy and the Witch'. Her story The Duolitary will be published in the anthology. 

Lora Stimson wins our prose competition!

Congratulations to Lora Stimson who has won Words And Women’s second writing competition with her wonderful short story Cornflake Girl.

Lora studied creative writing at Norwich School of Art & Design and UEA. She’s published stories and poems with Nasty Little Press, Unthank Books, Ink, Sweat and Tears and Streetcake Magazine. In 2014 she was mentored by novelist Shelley Harris as part of the WoMentoring scheme. Her first novel, about sex, grief and model villages, currently hides in a drawer but she has higher hopes for her second novel, about twins, which received an Arts Council England grant and is now in its final edit. Lora works as a programme manager for Writers' Centre Norwich and sings with the bands Moonshine Swing Seven and The Ferries. She lives in Norwich with her husband and son.

Lora wins £600 and her winning story will appear in our second anthology Words And Women: Two published by Unthank Books, which will be launched on International Women’s Day, 8^th March, this year.

Our competition was open to women living in the East of England over the age of 16. We asked for prose – fiction or non-fiction – under 2,200 words, and are pleased to say we received 170 scripts from writers based all over the region. The scripts, like last year, covered a variety of subjects: chance, fan fiction, ill health, old age, growing-up, sex, monkeys, writing, mountains, the menopause, Buddhism. They were set not just in this region but all over the world . This year we received more fiction than non-fiction; also many of our winners studied creative writing at university or are currently doing so.

Our guest judge for this year was Sarah Ridgard, author of Seldom Seen. All entries were judged anonymously and the unveiling of the names of the winning writers at the end of the process was very exciting! To quote Sarah: “There was such a diverse and dazzling array of submissions for the competition, it was clear at the outset that the task of judging the winners was going to be a really difficult one. But as the reading got underway, it was a joy it to discover those short stories or works of non fiction that made me sit up a little straighter and demanded to be read, re-read, and then read again. I'm delighted that those writers will have the chance for their work to be published in the anthology and read by many others.” 

Lora is our worthy overall winner. There are also 21 other writers whose scripts will be published in our anthology, along with the 4 pieces of work which have been created for our About project.

Over the next few days Words And Women will be posting photos and short biographies of all of our successful writers. Also Words And Women will be busily editing and shaping the anthology for publication. More news about this will be posted on our blog in due course.

Finally, Words And Women would like to say thank you to everybody who entered the competition. The quality of work was outstanding and very encouraging. 

The winning entries:

FIRST PRIZE OF £600 and PUBLICATION IN WORDS AND WOMEN: TWO  =

Lora Stimson for her short story Cornflake Girl. Lora lives in Norwich, Norfolk. 

PUBLICATION IN WORDS AND WOMEN: TWO =

Tricia Abraham – The Outside Woman – Fiction - (Cambridge, Cambridgeshire)

Melinda Appleby – Footprints On The Tideline – Creative Non-Fiction - (Eye, Suffolk)

Sarah Baxter – Lucky Lucky Girl –  Fiction - (Colchester, Essex)

Ceridwen Edwards – The Duolitary - Fiction  - (Norwich, Norfolk)

Louise Ells – Push – Fiction - (Milton, Cambridgeshire)

Abby Erwin – The Oversight – Fiction - (Norwich, Norfolk)

Melissa Fu – Mount Sanitas - Creative Non-Fiction - (Haslingfield,Cambridgeshire) 

Hannah Garrard – Did You Eat Lunch? - Creative Non-Fiction – (Norwich, Norfolk)

Hannah Harper -  Camera Black – Fiction - (Norwich, Norfolk)

Caitlin Ingham – The Bridge -  Fiction - (Norwich, Norfolk)

Jane Martin – Falling –  Fiction - (Lowestoft, Suffolk)

Holly McDede – The Game of Love!  -  Fiction - (Norwich, Norfolk)

Anna Metcalfe – The Professor -  Fiction - (Norwich, Norfolk)

Marise Mitchell – Now You See Me  -  Fiction - (Dereham, Norfolk)

Anthea Morrison – You Have What You Want –  Fiction - (Cambridge, Cambridgeshire)

Patricia Mullin – The Siren -   Fiction - (Syderstone, Norfolk)

Radhika Oberoi – Reporter -   Fiction - (Norwich, Norfolk)

Julianne Pachico – Kurt Cobain’s Son  - Fiction - (Norwich, Norfolk)

Beth Settle – For Dave Garner- Creative Non-Fiction –(Norwich, Norfolk)

Avani Shah - Mira/Meera -   Fiction - (Norwich, Norfolk)

Thea Smiley - Magazines  -   Fiction - (Halesworth, Suffolk)

COMMENDED =

Deborah Arnander – Babies – Fiction -(Norwich, Norfolk)

Jackie Bartlett – Something Big – Fiction -(Saffron Walden, Essex)

Patricia Debney – Multi-storey – Fiction - (Ely, Cambridgeshire)

Molly Morris – How To Break – Fiction -(Norwich, Norfolk)

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

What’s it all ‘About?’

Isabelle King reviews a Words And Women workshop for the Arts Council supported project 'About'. 

On a characteristically cold November day, a Saturday to be precise, I ventured to The Curve in The Forum, Norwich, and took up a single seat out of the one hundred and twenty that made up the auditorium.

But there was no audience. No performers in the wings. No presentation materials on view. Seven women took the stage, eight if you include myself, all seated around a table armed with pens, paper and laptops. No, this was not an ambiguous production. This was a Words And Women workshop for the ‘About’ project.

As the new Marketing Assistant for Words And Women, I was lucky enough to sit in and listen to this, the third in a series of three workshops, where I found out what ‘About’ is, well... about!

The project, supported by funding from Arts Council England, was launched by way of an open competition in August this year. Women from the East of England were invited to submit a proposal for a short text of 4,000 words or half an hour long which would explore the life of one woman and her relationship to place. The woman could be famous or non, contemporary or historical, fictional or factual. The place had to be within the East of England. The primary aim of the project - to create a text which can lend itself to the page and to performance.

Twelve promising runners-up were chosen to take part in The Tough Room, a workshop tutored by poet Hannah Walker, and the four winners - Jenny Ayres, Lilie Ferrari, Tess Little and Thea Smiley - are receiving ongoing mentoring for their pieces through workshops and on-line tuition. Belona Greenwood and Lynne Bryan of Words And Women, Hannah, and Adina Levay, Director of Norwich’s Chalk Circle Theatre Company, are the mentors. Adina will also take the completed texts and direct them for the stage. The results will be on show during Words And Women’s International Women’s Day event, Sunday 8^th March, at The Fusion Digital Gallery, The Forum, Norwich.

The workshop I attended gave me a really exciting insight into what audiences can expect on the 8^th March. What struck me most was the variety of the work being developed. Two are based in Norwich, one on the Bungay Straight, and one in Knebworth. Three are historical and one contemporary. The women explored range from regional rebel Jane Sellars, hung in Norwich 1631, to the fiery alter ego of an 1880’s prostitute.

It was also fascinating to learn how the writers are dealing with one particularly challenging aspect of the ‘About’ project; the fact that they are writing for both page and stage. One of the most unique things about the project is that the pieces are written to translate to both forms. But how does writing for prose with a view to performance affect the process?

Actress and playwright, Jenny Ayres, finds it easiest to write specifically with performance in mind. Her piece explores the voices of the Hertfordshire railway women of World War Two in which she incorporates the theatrical device of a chorus to comment on the action that takes place. Jenny will think about how the work translates to the page later on in the writing process and has been looking at short stories by Janice Galloway and Helen Simpson which mimic scripts as a possible way forward.

Thea Smiley however, has found it stifling to write with theatricality in mind. Her piece follows the journey of a recently bereaved woman who annually takes a particular walk along a hazardous road for reasons which only become clear as the text progresses.

Thea explained at the workshop how initially she felt more comfortable with forgetting the audience and writing solely in prose as she finds the form more freeing. When she read it out loud however, it was interesting to discover how the piece transcended. We heard, not just a detailed account of one woman’s experience told in first person, but a powerfully intimate monologue. 

Though each writer seems to have a different process, all four firmly agreed on one point - how refreshing it is to write invigorating and un-apologetically raw roles for women which actresses can really get their teeth stuck into.

The workshop came to a close with Adina  talking about her plans to develop the texts into performance. She explained that sets would be entirely minimal, directing the main focus to the actresses themselves.

This certainly resonates with the project’s concept. I felt similarly about the room in which we sat. It could have been just another auditorium were it not for the women who occupied it, discussing and debating writing, altogether making their ‘About’ a very exciting one.

Isabelle King is the Marketing Assistant for Words And Women. She's worked as an actress in theatre, film and radio in the UK and abroad; a career in which she has predominantly been seen in various Shakespearian guises. She's the founder of literary event Books Talk Back, which is hosted in London and Norwich, including at The British Library with support from The Eccles Centre. Isabelle's creative writing has been short-listed for the Ideastap/Writers' Centre Norwich national fiction competition and she also writes and produces arts journalism pieces for Future Radio.