For our May meeting, the main speaker will be literary agent Becky Bagnell.
Becky is the founder of the Lindsay Literary Agency and has been in publishing for over 25 years. She worked as a commissioning editor at Macmillan before becoming a literary agent in 2008. Becky’s clients have been published in over 30 languages across the world and include multi-award winning authors such as Pamela Butchart, Sue Wallman, Sam Gayton, Josh Silver, Larry Hayes and Louise Finch.
Her talk will focus on how to approach and secure a literary agent, how to make your submission stand out from the crowd and what to expect from the relationship. Leading on from this it will look at next steps and how to work with your agent to ensure you find the best publisher for you.
As our guest speaker, we’re pleased to welcome back Louise Morrish.
Louise is a librarian and author who lives in Hampshire with her family and canine writing buddy. Her passion is discovering the stories of ordinary women in the past who achieved extraordinary things but whom history has forgotten, and then reimagining their lives in her fiction. When she isn’t working, you can find her running, albeit slowly, in the countryside.
Louise’s new book Women of War tells the forgotten story of two pioneering female doctors in the First World War, who despite being rejected as military surgeons by the War Office went on to create the first all-female-run military hospital in France, and saved thousands of lives. Women of War is also inspired by another forgotten woman – Dorothy Lawrence – an aspiring journalist who disguised herself as a man and risked her life to fight in the trenches in order to report the truth of the war. Louise will be talking about how she transformed these real women into the characters in her novel.
The meeting will be Tuesday May 14th, at the Tower Arts Centre. Come along from 7pm. Talks start at 7:30pm. Members free, non-member tickets £10, students £2 (no advance booking, payment on entry).
Hampshire Writers' Society 