Tag: past

For our March meeting, we’re focusing on books for the little ones with speakers Lu Fraser and Helen Dineen.

Lu Fraser is the author of the best-selling, award-winning picture book The Littlest Yak, which launched her career in 2020 and went on to win The Oscars Book Prize, The Sainsbury’s Best Picture Book Award & The Sainsbury’s Children’s Book of the year. Since then, Lu has published several other picture books with the likes of Bloomsbury and Simon & Schuster, been translated into 25+ languages, been shortlisted for more than twenty awards (including Waterstone’s Children’s Illustrated Book of the Year) and even seen The Littlest Yak turned into a stage show. No one is more surprised than Lu…

Lu will be joining us to chat about navigating without a map, finding an agent who will bring you a cheeseburger and what it really takes to get yourself on a shelf.

N.B. She absolutely does mean it when she says ‘Ask me ANYTHING!’

Helen Dineen is an educational writer for children, with a focus on primary school reading schemes and English Language Teaching (ELT) materials. She has worked for a number of publishers including HarperCollins, OUP, Pearson, Hodder, Schofield and Sims, DK and York Press. She has written nearly twenty decodable books for phonics schemes, with more titles scheduled for publication soon. Helen also loves to write children’s poetry, with poems published in several anthologies and magazines. Twitter handle: @aitcheldee 

Helen will talk about the challenges and joys of writing for reading schemes.

The meeting will be Tuesday March 12th, 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).

In February, we welcome back psychological thriller writer Karen Hamilton.

What happens after you get an agent and are offered a deal? Karen will talk about the editing process, showing real examples of some of her books and how they changed from original draft through to the final editing stages.

Karen spent her childhood in Zimbabwe, Italy, Belgium and the UK. She worked as a flight attendant for many years before putting down roots in Hampshire to raise her family. Her first novel, The Perfect Girlfriend, was a Sunday Times Bestseller, followed by The Last Wife, The Ex-Husband and The Contest.

Our guest speaker is Jude Hayland. Jude was a commercial short story writer for women’s magazines for over 25 years, published in the UK and internationally. After completing an M.A. in Creative Writing at Winchester University and graduating with distinction, she switched to writing full length novels and has published three with a fourth completed and out later this year. She writes literary/commercial/book group fiction and blogs regularly from her website on all things writerly and bookish.

The meeting will be Tuesday February 13th, 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).

For our January meeting, we’re joined by writer Antosh Wojcik.

Antosh Wojcik is a writer, drummer and sound designer. His spoken word and drumming show, How To Keep Time: A Drum Solo for Dementia was produced by Penned in the Margins, touring the UK and internationally in 2019, supported by Arts Council England. He is the co-writer of the BFI-funded short, ‘Alo’ (2023) with writer-director, Xenia Glen. His work explores memory, time & glitches.

His talk is titled Creative Fusions: Collaborative & Multi-Disciplinary Approaches to Writing. His slides (including links to resources) can be downloaded for reference.

Our guest speaker is Dr Kane Holborn, exploring looking behind the canvas: repairing notions of (dis)ability through the tool of (in)verse ekphrasis – enacting art through description

By examining a series of contemporary poets with disabilities in conjunction with his own poetry, Kane will critically question how harmful notions of disability might be repaired.

The meeting will be Tuesday January 9th, 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).

For our December meeting, we’re delighted to welcome author and renowned creative writing tutor Adrienne Dines for what is sure to be an entertaining evening.

We also have the December Book Fair, where members will be showcasing their books for you to admire (and buy). Come early — from 6:45pm — to check out the books and chat to the authors.

Storytelling and Imagination

The sweet spot for writers often happens on the line between making things up/writing them down. Too much to one side, it sounds fake; too much the other, forced. Adrienne will take a lighthearted look at how we harness the craft of storytelling to find that sweet spot. 

Adrienne Dines is an author and writing tutor with years of experience working with writers, new and experienced, at Writers’ Festivals, Literary Festivals, the College of Preachers, in hospices and the high security unit of prisons.  She is currently working on the publication of Storysmith: the Craft of Storytelling for Writers following requests from students to collate her notes, and a request from her husband to deal with an overflowing filing cabinet…

Our guest speaker for the evening will be experienced editor (and HWS member) Jill French.

This month’s competition is judged by Adrienne Dines. If you’ve entered, be sure to attend so you can pick up your winner’s certificate.

The meeting will be Tuesday December 12th, at the Tower Arts Centre. Come along from 6:45pm. Talks start at 7:30pm. Members free, non-member tickets £10, students £2 (no advance booking, payment on entry).

Love it or loathe it, you can’t have failed to notice how artificial Intelligence has shaken up the world of artists and writers over the last year.

For our November meeting, we’ve invited Lesia Tkacz, PhD researcher at Southampton University, to talk about the latest advances in AI and what they mean for writers.

What Has AI Ever Done For Us? A Dip Into Generative Literature

Creators of generative literature have been working on the fringes of technology and literature to playfully push and probe at the boundaries of language, form, and reading. We’ll explore some of these weird, wacky, and even haunting works and consider how we as writers want our practice to develop in response to AI technology and hype. After all, it’s not the first time in history that we’re faced with a wild, emerging technology that’s provoking creative industries and disciplines!

Lesia Tkacz is a researcher focusing on creative AI, with a specialization in text generation. Her interests stem from a background in Fine Art, Literature, Linguistics, and Computer Science in a sociotechnical context. Lesia is currently part of interdisciplinary projects where she studies playful processes and tools, and is writing up her dissertation which explores the impact of paratext on computer generated novels.

Our guest speaker is interactive fiction author Joey Jones.

Lies Under Ice is a forthcoming interactive science fiction novel… but what even is an interactive novel? Let’s explore the niche world of interactive fiction, where text meets games. How can 200,000 words still be a novella? How do you keep track of the plot when it can branch in different directions? Can one person write a million endings? Does anyone make a living this way?

The meeting will be Tuesday November 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).

On Tuesday October 10th, our speakers will be author Jane Sanderson and her husband, author and journalist Brian Viner.

Jane Sanderson was born in South Yorkshire in 1962. She studied English at Leicester University, then after graduating she became a journalist. After a series of jobs with local newspapers she joined the BBC where she worked as a producer for Radio 4, first on the World at One, and then on Woman’s Hour.

Jane’s first novel, Netherwood, following the fortunes of a mining community and its ‘big house’ in the early twentieth century, was published by Sphere in 2011. Two further books in the series followed: Ravenscliffe and Eden Falls, followed by a contemporary novel, This Much is True, published by Orion.

In 2020 she published Mix Tape with Transworld, and summer 2022 sees her latest book, Waiting for Sunshine.

Brian Viner, who has just completed the ghosted autobiography of boxing promoter Frank Warren, will talk about the art of ghost-writing, its satisfactions and challenges. He will also touch on his long career as a journalist (he has been the Daily Mail’s chief film critic for the past decade, and was a sports writer on the Independent for many years before that), and as an author of seven other non-fiction books.

Brian has kindly agreed to set and judge the October competition. The results will be announced at the end of the meeting.

Come along to the Tower Arts Centre from 7pm. Talks start at 7:30pm. Members free, non-member tickets £10, students £2 (no advance booking, payment on entry).

For our first meeting of the 2023/2024 season, we’re excited to welcome bestselling author Hanna Jameson.

‘Something you are’: Hanna Jameson in conversation with Francesco Sarti

Something You Are is the title of Hanna Jameson’s debut novel published in her early twenties in 2012, shortlisted in 2013 by the Crime Writers’ Association for a John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger. Five bestselling publications later, Hanna is most recently the author of Are You Happy Now? from February 2023, hailed by the novelist Sara Collins as ‘One of the best novels of the year’. She writes, to quote Q Magazine, ‘like an angel on speed’. Currently working on her next novel and producing original work for television and film, Hanna will be in conversation with Francesco Sarti, a member of the Hampshire Writers’ Society and author at Francsart.com.

Both Hanna and Francesco invite questions in advance from Society members. They will try to include these in their conversation: ‘Ask me anything’, Hanna says. If you would like to submit a question, please send it to the Society chair, Gary Farnell, at inquiries @ hampshirewriterssociety.co.uk – with thanks.

Our guest speaker for this meeting will be author Heath Gunn.

“Really looking forward to chatting about all things crime thrillers, suspense and writing. As a reader as well as a writer in the genre, I know how important it is to be gripped by the scene you’re immersed in. I can’t wait to answer your questions about building suspense and any other writing questions you have.“

Heath was born in Sheffield, grew up in Rotherham and left home at eighteen to join the Royal Navy, as a Helicopter Engineer. He lived in Hampshire, along the South Coast for over 30 years, loving being near the sea, until summer 2022 when Heath relocated to his home county of South Yorkshire.

Alongside a colourful and varied career, Heath has written for years, producing stories of various lengths, poetry and children’s stories for his children when they were youngsters. In 2019, Prisoner was the first in the DI Lomas Baxter series, closely followed by his first gangland crime thriller Khan in 2020 and No Remorse a year later – the 2nd DI Baxter novel in 2021.

Heath has kindly agreed to set and judge the September competition. Results of the competition will be announced at the end of the meeting — so if you’ve entered, be sure to attend so you can collect your certificates and glory.

The meeting will be Tuesday September 12th, 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).

The June meeting will be held in our new venue: the Tower Arts Centre, which is off Romsey Road not far from the University.

Come along from 6:30pm to enjoy the Book Fair — an excellent opportunity to show off your books (whether self- or traditionally published) to your fellow writers, or if you are working towards publication, a great chance to find out how it’s done!

We’re delighted to have as our main speaker the legendary Della Galton. She’s a novelist, short story writer and journalist with over 35 years’ experience. Her writing credits include fifteen novels, several novellas, six non fiction books and over 2000 short stories published in the UK and abroad.  

She was the agony aunt for Writers’ Forum magazine and is a qualified Adult Education tutor. 

Her latest novels, The Bluebell Cliff series and The Puddleduck Farm series, are published by Boldwood Books. Her ‘How to Write’ Books are available from Amazon. For more information see www.dellagalton.co.uk

Her talk is titled My Path to Publication and some very important things I’ve learned – that may help you too (including SIX important rules).

Our guest speaker is AJ Spencer, who’ll be sharing tips on how to write believable LGBTQ+ Characters; how to show (not just tell) that your character is LGBTQ+, how to avoid avoid the ‘token gay character’ trope, and what topics are appropriate to write about. 

Della is judging our competition this month. The results will be announced at the end of the meeting, so if you’ve entered, do attend — if you win, you’ll get a certificate and we’ll all celebrate with you.

Entry is free for members, £10 for non-members, and just £2 for students. No booking required — just turn up. For help finding the Tower Arts centre, see here. 

We hope to see many of you there for this not-to-be-missed meeting!

We’re pleased to announce that we’ll be meeting at our new venue, the Tower Arts Centre, just off Romsey Road not far from the university.

Our main speaker is Joanna Barnard, winner of the prestigious Bath Novel Award and author of two books published by Ebury Press. She’s also a counsellor, writing coach, and teacher, and she’ll be sharing some tips on navigating the ups and downs of the writing life in her talk, From Rejection to Auction: Failure and Success in the Writer’s Life.

We’re also excited to have Louise Morrish back as our guest speaker. She’s just published her debut novel, Operation Moonlight, which won the 2019 Penguin Random House First Novel Competition.

Joanna Barnard has kindly agreed to judge our competition this month. The results will be announced at the end of the meeting, so if you’ve entered, do attend — if you win, you’ll get a certificate and we’ll all celebrate with you.

Come along from 7pm to meet and chat with fellow writers. The meeting starts at 7:30 pm.

Entry is free for members, £10 for non-members, and just £2 for students. No booking required — just turn up. For help finding the Tower Arts centre, see here.

We hope to see many of you there for what should be an excellent meeting!

Our April meeting will be held in a new venue: the Tower Arts Centre, which is off Romsey Road not far from the University. For more information, see the web page here, and the map is here.

As usual, the meeting starts at 7:30pm. Entry to the talk is free for members, £10 for non-members, students £2.

Our main speaker is Cheryl Butler. She is a historian, writer, former Head of Culture at Eastleigh, Honorary Fellow of the University of Winchester, Fellow of the Royal Historical Association and has written extensively on the history of Southampton as well as being an editor for the Southampton Records and member of the Southampton Tourist Guides Association.

In Cheryl’s talk, Shakespeare, Travelling Players & The Historic Henry, she’ll be looking at the events of 1415, which had a big impact on Hampshire, Shakespeare’s interpretation, and at his potential knowledge of the area via the travelling players routes.

Our guest speaker is Chris Heal, discussing his latest book: The Winchester Tales. Chris Heal completed his history PhD at Bristol University in 2012 when he was sixty-five-years-old.