For our October meeting, the main speaker is John-Paul Flintoff. He comes at writing with an unusually wide range of ideas: he’s been a newspaper and magazine feature writer, he’s trained in improvisational theatre, and he illustrates his own books and other people’s.
“What I love about these different disciplines is that they all bring riches to each other. I simply can’t imagine how I’d manage without that mix.”
He’s published non-fiction, fiction, poetry, how-to books and memoir, in 16 languages. One had the diffident title A Modest Book About How To Make An Adequate Speech. His bestseller sounds altogether more self-confident: How To Change The World.
“I must remember always to use self-confident titles in future,” he says.
He lives in London but had the good fortune to live in Winchester when he was tiny.
His topic for the evening is how to make our writing more delightful. “There’s no point being harshly self-critical. But how to avoid complacency without it? How to keep making it better?”
Our guest speaker is Lynn Farley-Rose — who is both an author of marvellous non-fiction and the Hampshire Writers’ Society newsletter editor. She’ll be talking about her book The Interview Chain (which you should read, it’s very good).
We’ll also have the results of the October competition, judged by John-Paul Flintoff.
The meeting will be Tuesday October 15th, at the Tower Arts Centre. Come along from 7:00pm. Talks start at 7:30pm. Members free, non-member tickets £10, students £2 (no advance booking, payment on entry).
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