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News

Thursday, July 10th 2008, 7.30 p.m. - 9.30 p.m. The Pavilion

Peter Moore's education followed an interesting route from attendance at Hurlstone Agricultural High School, to the study of Medieval History at the University of Sydney. After graduation, he went to Tokyo for a year where he taught English. He went back to Australia and worked as an advertising copywriter until he decided to combine his two loves - travel and writing - to become a travel writer. He travelled around the Equator and wrote a - much rejected - book about it. He returned to copywriting but continued to travel, having the odd article published until 'No Shitting in the Toilet' was published in 1997. Since then he has also had published "The Wrong Way Home", "The Full Montezuma", "Swahili for the Broken-Hearted", "Vroom with a View", "Same Same but Different" and "Vroom by the Sea".

Thursday, June 12th 2008, 7.30 p.m. - 9.30 p.m. The Pavilion

Jay Dixon is the author of "The Romance Fiction of Mills & Boon 1909-1990s" and is currently researching the history of the Regency novel as well as working as a freelance editor. Her talk will be on the influence of Shakespeare on romantic fiction, including Mills & Boon romances and Georgette Heyer's Regency novels.

Thursday, May 15th 2008, 7.30 p.m.

We are proud to announce an OPEN MIC session of poetry and short stories as part of Brighton Festival Fringe at the Ropetackle Centre, Shoreham. This is a wonderful opportunity for local authors to take to the stage and give their masterpiece an airing. Alternatively you can come along and just sit back and listen! Pieces should be max. 5 minutes long and names will be drawn out of a hat to determine who performs. To complement the evening's proceedings, special guests including the club's patron, Simon Brett, and Geoff Allnut, aka The Speech Painter, will also be there to perform their own work.

Thursday, May 8th 2008, 7.30 p.m. - 9.30 p.m. The Pavilion

Stella Sykes was born in Scotland a long time ago and was brought up on a farm in Kent.   Her many jobs have included being a cleaner, running a marriage bureau, being a photographic stylist and writing fashion copy for an advertising agency.   Having lived in Spain and Australia and London she has now settled in Hampshire with her second husband, six dogs, sixteen alpacas and several chickens.   She has a son, three step-children, a grandson and six step-grandchildren and apart from family her interests include skiing, gundogs, gardening, cooking and eavesdropping.  

Thursday, April 10th 2008, 7.30 p.m. - 9.30 p.m. The Pavilion

An Evening with Adrian Crick - Adrian Crick is a Worthing based artist, poet and musician. He will talking about, and demonstrating, the art of lyric writing.

Thursday, March 13th 2008, 7.30 p.m. - 9.30 p.m.

How to Get Out of the Slush-pile - Caroline Oakley is currently Publisher at the Centre for Alternative Technology, Editor at Large for Orion Books and Editor for Honno/Welsh Women's Press - and quite busy! She has experience of a wide range of books - fiction and non-fiction, authors and agents and over twenty years of experience in trade publishing.

Thursday, February 14th 2008, 7.30 p.m.

Heather has been teaching creative writing for City College Brighton and Hove since 2001. Her classes are attended by both beginners and improvers and are designed to cover the different aspects of fiction writing. She also runs courses in the community, reaching learners in places like libraries, resource centres and community groups. She has had several short stories published and hopes to write more when she gets time! Heather's workshop tonight will be on CHARACTERISATION.

Thursday, January 10th 2008, 7.30 p.m.

Fiona Courage who works for the Mass Observation at University of Sussex will talk about the publication of "Nella Last's War" (dramatised for TV as "Housewife, 49" featuring Victoria Wood), and about some of the other diaries from the same collection. She will also describe the work of the Presentday counterparts to Nella - people still writing for Mass Observation about their lives in the present day.

Thursday, December 13th 2007, 7.30 p.m.

Festive fun hosted by Lawrence Long.
Teams of four, £1 per team member, festive prizes for the winning team, bring along Tom, Dick and Harriott!
Please note the quiz is being held at Beechwood Hall, Richmond Road, Worthing

Thursday, November 8th 2007, 7.30 p.m.

Open mic for club members only. Open theme; short story must be max. 5 minutes long (approx. 500 words). Fourteen entries will be read - names will be drawn out of a hat - and there is a cash prize for the winner.
To commemorate the Club's 70th birthday, an audio CD will be produced with the Club's patron, Simon Brett, reading the fourteen stories. The CD will be available to buy at the December meeting.

Thursday, October 11th 2007, 7.30 p.m.

The club's very own patron, Simon Brett, needs no introduction... He is coming along to help celebrate our 70th birthday and he will also be dipping into his diary writing (amongst his numerous literary feats, he edited the Faber Book of Diaries in 1986). Don't miss this important milestone in the club's history!

Thursday, September 13th 2007, 7.30 p.m.

Notice is hereby given that the 70th AGM of The West Sussex Writers' Club will be held in the Lewes Room, Field Place, The Boulevard, Worthing.
After liquid refreshments, the drama competition winner and the runners up will perform their masterpieces!

Message from Peter Guttridge who was supposed to host our Day for Writers but never turned up; this is the reason why:

Dear Nina,
I feel dreadful; I was stuck in what turned out to be the major 30 mile tailback on the M5. It was horrible but I was so conscious how badly I was letting you all down. I have done critiques on each of the short story entries and a little introductory blurb - I'll get those to you asap. The most frustrating thing was not having my phone on me. Let me figure out a way to make it up to WSWC...
With apologies
Peter

Day for Writers 2007

Another successful Day was held on 21 July at Field Place - this was our 21st conference and as ever it was an action packed day for every type of writer. Please go to Day for Writers to learn more!

Thursday, June 14th 2007, 7.30-9.30 p.m

His mother was glove maker to the Queen, he's made 26 movies, and he's currently one of Britain's biggest selling authors. He has 12 international best sellers to his name, translated into 27 languages. His new novel NOT DEAD ENOUGH is published in June 2007.

 

Roger Green & Emma Rogers

 

Thursday, May 10th 2007, 7.30-9.30 p.m

What do Editors want? Roger Green, an editor himself, and journalist Emma Rogers tell us how to aim an article directly at the target.

 

Thursday, April 12th 2007, 7.30-9.30 p.m

Maureen didn’t start writing until she was thirty. After submitting a play to the BBC she was asked to write historical plays for the Schools programmes, where she found she enjoyed doing the research. She also discovered she loved teaching, which she does at Summer Schools all over the country. Five of her books for children have been published by Heinemann and one of her plays has been set to music and performed in the Purcell Room and the Unicorn and Ben Travers Theatres.

 

Thursday, March 8th 2007, 7.30-9.30 p.m.

Anna has worked in all forms of communication and media including press, theatre, radio, television and advertising. Companies such as the BBC, Granada, London Weekend Television and J Walter Thompson are where she learned her craft, and she has written five of her own books.
Her style is informal, relaxed and yet highly focused and she acts as a creative catalyst for change to a wide variety of people. Her talk will be on "self-publishing".

 

Thursday, February 8th, 7.30-9.30 p.m

Sue Walker is an investigative television journalist who has spent many years specialising in crime-related documentaries. Born in Edinburgh, she now lives on the Sussex coast but her novels are based in Scotland. They are set in dramatic locations such as the Outer Hebrides, the East Lothian coast, and lesser known parts of Edinburgh. Her first novel, The Reunion, was selected for WH Smith's Fresh Talent and reached number 7 in the Australian bestseller list. She has since published The Reckoning and her new book, The Dead Pool, will be out in October.

 

Thursday, January 11th, 2007, 7.30-9.30 p.m.

"My Eric Sings" is the intriguing title of Eric's talk, an amusing and nostalgic look at life in show business. It takes in theatre, concert hall, cinema and television, and includes anecdotes about some of the many artists with whom he has worked and the Royals he has met. He talks about his history as a writer, his specialism in pantomime scripts and his show business novel "The Cosmopolitans". Eric is a member of the Club, he has three actress granddaughters and he lives in Worthing.

Thursday 14 December, 7.30 - 9.30 p.m.

Trivial Pursuit with Liss Norton

This is one of two annual social events held by the Club. Come along and have some fun. It's a team game and it doesn't matter if you've never been before - no one is ever left out and all are welcome!

 

Thursday 9th November, 2006, 7:30 - 9:30 p.m

Chris was educated at University of Birmingham where the took a BA and then a Ph.D in history. After working in a variety of jobs, he retrained as a solicitor and practised in Sussex until becoming a full-time writer. Following on from his remarkable debut "Dissolution", "Dark Fire", was his second novel in his Shardlake series and the third, "Sovereign", has recently been published by Macmillan. Chris lives in Brighton.

 

Thursday 12th October, 2006, 7:30 - 9:30 p.m

John Henty has been a freelance broadcaster/journalist for over 25 years. He started his career as a reporter on the "Croydon Advertiser" then worked in public relations for British European Airways before joining the BBC in 1967. John is a world authority on the life and times of children's illustrator Mabel Lucie Attwell. John is also Chairman of the Max Miller Appreciation Society in Brighton. He has recently published his own autography "Whatever Happened to John Henty".

 

Thursday 8th June, 2006, 7:30 - 9:30 p.m

Santa Montefiore is the fastest growing name in women's commercial fiction. Her books - six to date - have sold over two million copies in Europe alone and they have all been international bestsellers. Santa says that with each book she tries to create a world that is exotic, sensual and full of colourful characters, and she hopes her readers get as much pleasure out of that "world" as she did creating it. Santa spent much of the 90s in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and her first novel, "Meet Me Under the Ombu Tree" is set in that country.

www.santamontefiore.co.uk

Thursday 11th May, 2006, 7:30 - 9:30 p.m

Stella has been writing since the age of nine. As her career progressed she wrote first as a reporter and then in the Parliamentary Press Gallery at the House of Commons. She is now a full time-author, having published thirty-nine books and over 250 short stories. ‘Veil of Death’ was published in June 2005 and ‘Mirror Mirror’ in December 2005. She is also a cat author with eight cat anthologies to her name.

Awards include: first prize in ‘The Art of Writing’, The London Magazine; shortlisting for the Catherine Cookson Novel Award; winner of the Elizabeth Goudge Cup; winner of the Bonmarche Short Story Competition, Autumn 2005.

Stella will talk about how to collect material, how to collate it, easy ways of writing it and the amazingly different styles of presentation.

 

Thursday 13th April, 2006, 7.30 - 9.30 p.m

Steve Carroll is a local businessman running a design studio 'Inspiration by Design' as well as the networking group 'Worthing Business Circle'. Although his first love was writing he went to Art College to study graphic design but, after his first design business closed down in the recession of the early 90s, he returned to writing and managed to get an agent, but no publisher for a science fiction novel 'The Messenger Boy'.

Moving to Worthing in 1998, he worked alongside Bob Bond a local comic strip artist who suggested turning the story into a graphic novel. A new agent managed to work out a publishing deal as a series of graphic novels on the basis that he set the story in the 12th Century not the 23rd Century. The result was the 'Riddler's Fayre' series to be published from 2006 to 2007.

Steve is married with two sons and still paints and teaches art classes.

 

 

Thursday 9th March, 2006, 7.30 - 9.30 p.m.

Chris Hare talks about Hilaire Belloc’s famous Sussex-located book and offers an insight into the humour, wit and wisdom it contains. Set in the Sussex countryside of one hundred years ago, ‘The Four Men’ is a timeless tale of life, love and death and what it means to be human.

Chris Hare has written several books on the history of Sussex. He has taught for the University of Sussex and is currently an Adult Education Manager based at Midhurst.

 

 

Thursday, 9th February, 2006, 7.30 p.m.

Workshop-style session: The Art of Rewriting

Susannah has an enviable creative record. She spent ten years as an opera singer, singing principal roles in many of the leading opera houses. She now works as a novelis and playwright and is artistic director of The Paddock, a performing arts organisation dedicated to creating new collaborations between artists working in different art forms. Her first novel, Long Gone Anybody, ws shortlisted for the Pendleton May First Novel Award and her second, Cold Comfort, will be published in February. Come along and join the workshop - everyone's bound to benefit from someone who is so well-versed in the creative arts!

 

 

Thursday, 10th November, 2005, 7.30 p.m.

Lynne Barrett-Lee was born in London in 1959 and is married with three children. She and her family moved to Cardiff in 1994, and she has since written over 100 short stories and articles for most of the major women's magazines. She is also the author of five novels, the latest of which, Wild About Harry, was published in September 2005 and is written udner the pseudonym Daisy Jordan. Lynne appears regularly on Radio Wales and also writers for Western Mail.

 

 

Thursday, 13th October, 2005, 7.30 p.m

The span of Derren’s acting career is extraordinary as he has had dozens of appearances in repertory theatre, the West End and television. As if this is not enough, he also has an impressive list of films to his credit and he has worked in the most illustrious of company, which includes Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood.
Clearly a man of many talents, Derren has also written a novel and screenplay ’The Amorous Milkman’ the film of which he went on to produce and direct.
After spending ten years in Australia, he has returned to the British theatre and is currently touring in in the play ’Wait Until Dark’ by Frederick Knott which runs until September.

 

It's An 'Ology

On 24 May 2005, an exciting milestone was reached within the Club's long history because that was when "IT'S AN 'OLOGY" was launched at Borders Books and Music, Churchill Square Shopping Centre, Brighton, as part of Brighton Festival Fringe. The BBC heralded it as THE literary event of the Festival Fringe and more than seventy people crammed into Borders to hear a selection of work being performed; while on 21 June it was Methvens' turn to host yet another successful event, this time in Worthing.
The book is the brainchild of Nina Tucknott and features short stories and poems by many Club members. The Club's patron, Simon Brett, chose the thirty stories that are included while The Speechpainter, aka Geoff Allnutt, chose the dozen poems - both have their own work featured too.
The book is available via Boders in Brighton, City Books in Hove and Methvens in Worthing, and costs £6.99. Copies can also be obtained by post by sending a cheque (made payable to WSWC) for £8.50 (to incl. p&p) to 103 Poplar Avenue, Hove, BN3 8PJ.

Two local charities, The Chestnut Tree House Appeal and The Rockinghorse Appeal, are involved in this venture, and £1 from each copy sold will be split equally between them.