Hampshire Writers' Society

Tag: past

  • March 14th: Claire Gradidge

    March 14th: Claire Gradidge

    Join us at 7:30pm at the University of Winchester, Winton Room 5, when our main speaker with be local author Claire Gradidge, and our guest speaker is Sara Gangai. Results of the February competition, judged by Claire Gradidge, will be announced, along with the details for the March competition.

    Talks are free for members. Non-members are also welcome — tickets £10, students £2. No booking required.

    Blending Fact and Fiction – writing WWII crime fiction set in Hampshire

    Claire Gradidge was born and brought up in Romsey. After a career as, among other things, a nurse and a school librarian, she went to the University of Winchester, where she graduated in 2009 with a first class honours BA in Creative Writing.

    In January 2018, she was awarded a PhD in creative writing. The Unexpected Return of Josephine Fox, written as the creative element of her PhD study, went on to win the Richard and Judy Search for a Bestseller competition.

    The third book in the Josephine Fox series, A Conflict of Interests, was published in October, 2022.

    In her talk, Claire will discuss how memory and old maps, family stories and local history helped her create the Josephine Fox mystery series.

    An Associate Lecturer on the Creative Writing Programme at the University of Winchester, Claire also leads a local Adult Education class. She has had short fictions and poetry published in South, Orbis and Vortex. An active member of the creative writing community, she is a founder member of Chandlers Ford Writers and participates in local writing events, including as a judge for poetry and prose competitions.

    Find Claire on Twitter (@ClaireGradidge) or online at 

    www.chandlersfordwriters.wordpress.com/chandlers-ford-writers 

    Sara Gangai

    Sara Gangai was the Event Manager and then Director of the Winchester Writers’ Festival before starting Writers’ Weekend when the university decided to close the Writers’ Festival.

    In 2022, after ten years with the Writers’ Festival and Writers’ Weekend, she passed the torch to the team at I AM in Print so that she could focus on her passion: interviewing and capturing life histories on video.

    Her interest in oral histories began while she was studying for her MA in Regional and Local History and Archaeology at the University of Winchester. She knew that it was common to record people’s recollections for academic research, but felt that every one of us had an interesting and unique story to tell.

    She began SharedMemories.uk to give people the opportunity to tell their life stories so that they can be shared with family and friends and treasured for generations to come.

    She will be speaking about the value of recording your life story and the power of authentic voices and memories to inform your writing.

  • February 14th: Nick Cook

    February 14th: Nick Cook

    Join us at 7:30pm at the University of Winchester, Winton Room 5, when our main speaker will be author Nick Cook (presenting by video) and our guest speaker, children’s author Yarrow Townsend. Results of the February competition, judged by Yarrow Townsend, will be announced, along with the details for the March competition.

    Nick Cook

    After a long and successful career in the video games industry, Nick Cook turned to writing science fiction.

    Nick has many interests, from space exploration and astronomy to travelling the world. He has flown light aircraft and microlights, an experience he used as research for Cloud Riders. He’s always loved to cook, but then you’d expect it with his surname. His writing in many ways reflects his curiosity about the world around him. He loves to let his imagination run riot to pose the question: What if?

    Yarrow Townsend

    Yarrow Townsend spent her childhood among the moss, oak and heather of the New Forest. After working as a teacher, and then as a stablehand, Yarrow completed an MA in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University, before returning to the forest to work for the RSPB. Always in search of ways to be closer to the outdoors, Yarrow now lives on a narrowboat, travelling the canals with her garden on the roof. The Map of Leaves is inspired by her life by the woods and the water, and by her own parents’ herb books. Follow her: @yarrowtownsend

    The Map of Leaves is published by Chicken House.

  • January 10th: Nate Crowley

    January 10th: Nate Crowley

    Join us at the University of Winchester, Winton Room 5, where our main speaker will be author Nate Crowley and our special guest is children’s poet Val Harris. We’ll also have the results of the January competition and announcement of the competition for February.

    Talks are free for members. Non-members £10, students £2.

    Playing with other people’s toys: the pros and cons of work for hire writing

    Having written novels both with traditional publishers and as a freelancer for the Warhanmer 40,000 IP, Nate Crowley makes a practical comparison of his experiences in these two very different professional models, and offers his thoughts on making the best of both worlds

    Nate Crowley is an author, interactive fiction consultant, videogames journalist and public speaker.
    Nate has worked as a journalist, a publisher, a teacher and an aquarium guy. He has a degree which involved all sorts of stuff but basically ended up being about the history of natural history. He enjoys a good trip to the zoo, creating feasts, and staring into the wasteland behind his house. He loves to talk about beasts and SF and the sea, plus history and films and all kinds of nerd stuff.

    Special Guest: Val Harris

    Val will talk about writing and publishing in general and her own journey to writing poetry for children, why it’s important, how much it is appreciated by schools, and how little exposure it receives from booksellers. 

    Val Harris is a children’s poet and has had her poems published in several children’s publications including:The Caterpillar, Paperbound Magazine, The Toy Press, Little Thoughts Press, and she has multiple poems flying on the Dirigible Balloon, an online poetry resource for schools and individuals.  Val has been writing for many years.  She has published several adult books. She is passionate about poetry for children. It is an invaluable tool for helping children to understand language, as well as giving them confidence to write and to express themselves through poetry.  

  • December 13th: Susmita Bhattacharya

    December 13th: Susmita Bhattacharya

    Join us on December 13th at the University of Winchester, Winton Room 5, where our main speaker is author and writing teacher Susmita Bhattacharya. She’ll be talking about her route to becoming a published author.

    Come along from 6:45pm, when some of our members will have tables outside Winton Room 5 to show off their published books, and will be happy to discuss and sell their work.

    The talk starts at 7:30pm.

    Talks are free for members. Non-members £10, students £2.

    My Writing Journey: An unconventional route to publication

    Did I dream of becoming a published writer? No, because it did not occur to me that such a thing was possible for an ordinary girl growing up in Mumbai. After graduating with a degree in graphic design, and sailing on oil tankers for three years, I settled down in Cardiff, and the world of writing opened up for me. Let me share with you my early experiences of writing and how I became a published writer and hopefully inspire you in your writing journey.

    Susmita Bhattacharya is an Indian-born writer. Her debut novel, The Normal State of Mind (Parthian, 2015) was long-listed at the Mumbai Film Festival, 2018. Her short story collection, Table Manners (Dahlia Publishing, 2018) won the Saboteur Award for Best Short Story Collection (2019) and was a finalist for the Hall & Woodhouse DLF Prize, 2019 and has been featured on BBC Radio 4. She teaches creative writing at Winchester University and facilitated the ArtfulScribe Mayflower Young Writers programme in Southampton. She was also Writer-in-Residence at the Word Factory, London in 2021. You can find her on Twitter: @Susmitatweets

    Charlotte Yonge Society

    Our guest speaker in December is Alys Blakeway of the Charlotte Yonge Society.

    We’ll also have the results of the December competition, adjudicated by Susmita, and announcement of the competition for January.

  • November 8th: Clare Whitfield

    November 8th: Clare Whitfield

    Join us at 7:30pm at the University of Winchester, Winton Room 5, for talks from our main speaker, author Clare Whitfield, with guest speaker David Keighley.

    Talks are free for members of the HWS. Visitor tickets £10 (£2 for students).

    Getting noticed in the Slush Pile

    Clare will talk about her journey to getting published. It’s a very difficult industry to break into and she will talk about how she secured a two book deal and agent on submission and the process from contract to publishing a debut novel, and what to expect. 

    Clare Whitfield was born in Morden in 1978 (at the bottom of the Northern line) in Greater London. After university she worked at a publishing company before going on to hold various positions in buying and marketing. She now lives in Hampshire with her family. Her debut novel, People of Abandoned Character, won the Goldsboro Glass Bell Award and was also short listed for the HWA Debut Award, and was also published by Head of Zeus. Her second novel, The Gone and the Forgotten, is out June 9th 2022.

    Our guest speaker is David Keighley, and the results of the November ‘Pitch your Novel’ competition will be announced.

  • September 13th: Judith Heneghan

    September 13th: Judith Heneghan

    The first meeting of the 2022/2023 season is September 13th, in Winton Building 5, 7:30pm.

    The main speaker is Judith Heneghan.

    Fact into Fiction

    Novelists make things up. For some writers, this includes constructing a fictional narrative from the raw material of experience. Using her novel Snegurochka as a starting point, Judith explores the pitfalls and pleasures of writing fiction that draws on real-life events.

    Judith Heneghan is a writer, programme leader for the MA Creative Writing at the University of Winchester, and a mentor with Jericho Writers. She has written over 60 books for young people, and her first novel for adults, Snegurochka (Salt, 2019) was shortlisted for the Edward Stanford travel writing awards. She has recently completed a second novel set in upstate New York.

    Barbara Large Memorial Award 

    Anthony Ridgway will present this year’s Barbara Large Memorial Award. To keep you in suspense,  you will find out who the worthy winner is on the evening. Anthony Ridgway was the award winner in 2019 and has kindly agreed to make the presentation.

  • June 14th: Tamar Hodes

    June 14th: Tamar Hodes

    Tuesday 14th June, 6.30pm – 9.30pm

    Stripe Studio

    Book Fair from 6.30 in the foyer.

    Speaker: Tamar Hodes, author

    Talk:  Life Drawing, Life Writing

    In life drawing classes there is a model, but when we write we have no such model, so where do our ideas come from? And how can experiences be turned into fiction? Using her story ‘The Pigeon’, broadcast on BBC Radio 4, writer Tamar Hodes will show us how she used a real incident as a basis for her work, combining fact with imagination and technique. She will also read from her latest novel Mixed.

    Tamar’s books – Raffy’s Shapes, The Watercress Wife and Other Stories, The Water and the Wine, and Mixed will be on sale and she will happily sign copies.

    Special Guest: B Random, author

    A passion for sci-fi/ fantasy  as a teenager led to her writing a first book aged fourteen. After a family and a career in law and medicine came a chance to return to her first love for writing. Her inspirations come from science, wildlife and nature, especially the sea. She has been a member of the Hampshire Writers’ Society since its inception.

    The appeal of living in another world, escaping from the mundane, endures.  Delighting in the weird and wonderful, sharing glorious flights of imagination, she draws you into fantasy lands and darkest emotion. The style will take your breath away and make you smile. Expect a vivid roller-coaster of action, emotion and the unexpected. For her, the writer’s reward is to take other people into that brand new world and show them its magic.

    HWS Members entry: free

    Visitors tickets £10; Students £2

  • May 10th: Beth O’Leary

    May 10th: Beth O’Leary

    Writing with Heart 

    Tuesday 10th May, 7.30pm – 9.30pm

    Winton Building Room 5,  University of Winchester

    Beth will discuss her writing journey, how and why she writes uplifting fiction, and why she believes reading should never be a guilty pleasure.
    Beth O’Leary is a Sunday Times bestselling author whose books have been translated into more than 30 languages.
    She wrote her debut novel, ‘The Flatshare’, on her train journey to and from her job at a children’s publishing house. The book has been longlisted for the Comedy Women in Print Prize and shortlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award.
    Beth now lives in the Hampshire countryside and writes full time.
    Beth O’Leary’s latest book, The No-Show  was published by Quercus on 5th April 2022 and on 24th April reached No.5 on the Sunday Times Bestseller List.

    Special guest: Louise Morrish
    Louise Morrish is a Librarian from Hampshire whose debut novel won the 2019 Penguin Random House First Novel Competition in partnership with the Daily Mail. She finds inspiration for her stories in the real-life adventures of women in the past, whom history has forgotten. Her novel, Operation Moonlight will be published on 21st July 2022.

    HWS Members entry: free

    Visitors tickets £10; Students £2

    Networking from 7pm

    Book Stalls : P&G Wells Books and HWS Member Dai Henley