2021: Archived Meetings
Thursday, 25. Feb 2021 - Short Story Competition Judging Event
*** Note that the date for this meeting has changed ***
Our competition Rosemary Hayes is an author and creative writing tutor. She came to writing from a background in advertising, marketing and publishing. Working intermittently for Cambridge University Press from 1986-2001, one of her jobs was to run a national children’s writing competition, The Cambridge Young Writers’ Award, which attracted thousands of entries. In 1989 she launched her own publishing company, Anglia Young Books, producing curriculum-related historical fiction for primary schools.
Tuesday, 6. Apr 2021 - Annual General Meeting
Note that the AGM will be held in April this year and not March as usual.
The meeting will be held via zoom. Details to follow
Tuesday, 4. May 2021 - Workshop
Hannah Hooton
How do I blindside my reader without completely cheating them? How do I lay a trail of clues without my plot becoming predictable? This workshop is designed to help you answer those questions and more.
We will be covering the five different types of foreshadowing, including Chekhov’s gun, prophecy, flashback, symbolic foreshadowing, and red herring, discussing examples in literature and other storytelling mediums and trying our hand at implementing each technique.
We will also look at false conclusions, misdirection, double bluffs, deflecting blame and bias, each of which helps to keep plot fresh and unexpected and assists you in ‘manipulating’ your reader’s expectations.
The workshop is held on Zoom. All members will be e-mailed a link to participate.
These topics will be accompanied by writing exercises to get the imagination buzzing and to really let these new techniques sink in. There is a lot to cover, so it may be that we run out of time, but copies of notes will be made available to anyone who wishes to have one.
Tuesday, 1. Jun 2021 - Flash Fiction Competition
Competitors bring a printed copy of their anonymous entry to the meeting, word limit 250
Saturday, 4. Sep 2021 - Summer Social
Because the date for ending anti-Covid measures has been set back to 19th July, we thought it wise to set a later date for our social.
We now plan to hold this on Saturday 4th September, from late afternoon onwards. The venue will be Deerfield Stud Farm, Dullingham. There will be a charge of £5 a head, and you are asked to bring a dish to share and something to drink.
As we did in 2019, there will be a cabaret. You may sing a song, recite a poem or tell a joke. We know that your own writing is amazingly good, but ask you to save that for one of our working Groups.
Usually members are welcome to bring guests, and we hope that will be the case t his year. However , I am sure you will appreciate that this depends on what rules about social mixing are in force at the time.
Tuesday, 7. Sep 2021 - Professor Andrew Cowan
Andrew Cowan studied at the University of East Anglia, where he is now Director of Creative Writing and teaches on the Creative Writing MA.
Since his acclaimed and prize winning first novel, Pig (1994), he wrote another four novels which depict people in provincial worlds; there is an interest in the domestic, in the mechanics of relationships when the blood-rush lust of the beginning falls away
One of the best things about Andrew Cowan is that he refuses write to a pattern. Quietly innovative and always intriguing, he never resolves his plots with pat or easy answers. He has already produced an impressive body of work and is one of the most accomplished of contemporary British writers.
Tuesday, 5. Oct 2021
Rosie Sykes
Rosie Sykes is a food writer and chef, living in London and Cambridge who was, at one time, Head Chef at Fitzbillies. She has has cooked in the kitchens of some of Britain's most celebrated chefs, including Joyce Molyneux, Shaun Hill and Alastair Little. Her critically acclaimed gastropub, The Sutton Arms in Smithfields, London, established her as one of the most exciting cooks working in the UK, and from 2001 to 2003 Rosie wrote for the Guardian's Weekend magazine as The Kitchen Doctor.
