On Friday there’s a chance to celebrate Bristol’s Tbilisi connection and hear from Meg Clothier, journalist and author of The Girl King, a novel about Queen Tamar of Georgia. Meg will be at Foyles on Friday March 7th (6pm start) discussing her book with our own Jean Burnett who is a long-time member of the Bristol…
It has been a busy few months since our launch in October with Bristol Women Writers members taking parts in lots of events around the Bristol area as well as knuckling down to get on with our own writing projects. (Yes, we write stuff too!) But now we’re ready to ‘go public’ again with a…
This week we’re delighted to welcome our first ever guest blogger, Debz Hobbs-Wyatt. We invited her because three of us, Gail, Shirley and Ali, all read her debut novel While No One Was Watching and all absolutely loved it. The book (Ali’s review is here) tells the story of what else might have happened in…
Nina Milton continues with her short story advice. There is only one rule that can never be broken, and that is length. A short story has to be short. But how short? Are there minimum or maximum word counts that short fiction must sit between?: The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms says that a short…
Nina continues her exploration of the short story craft. In my last blog, I looked at how the short story works today and wondered at its level of popularity. I do sometimes worry that the only people who read the short story are people write, or want to write short stories. Even worse, some people…
By Shirley Wright My romantic streak has received a series of blows to the head recently. Last month I read A Passionate Sisterhood (Virago) by biographer and friend Kathleen Jones, and now I have to re-evaluate my life-long passion for poets like Wordsworth and Coleridge because they were, essentially, male chauvinist pigs. It’s a great…
Last month Sally Hare was anticipating having another bash at Nanowrimo. We’re glad to see she lived to tell the tale. Well done Sally! It’s been two weeks since the end of National Novel Writing Month; the aches in my arms have just about been Zumba-ed away and my eyes no longer look like…
From Ali Bacon On three separate weekends this year, an ‘abnormal load’ (well three of them, to be precise) passed through the outskirts of Bristol, resulting in road closures and general traffic mayhem. Not only that but a significant numberof people left their homes and walked to the nearest vantage point just so see the…
Today we’re delighted to welcome our newest member, Jo Reed, who has some great experience to share on the dreaded elevator pitch. At some time, every novelist comes up against the infamous ‘elevator pitch’. For those who haven’t encountered it yet, here’s the idea – you get into an elevator (that’s a lift to us…
from Jenni O’Connor What an evening. What a week. What a year. As anyone who has been following this blog will know, the road to publication of Unchained was long and fairly tortuous, but – happily – culminated in a fantastic, packed-out launch event which made it all worthwhile. But behind the scenes, many of…