New Members Welcome!
West Sussex Writers
Our club is one of the oldest in the UK, and has been helping writers of all genres since 1937! We welcome members of all backgrounds and levels of experience.
Our Programme
The club meets every 2nd Thursday of the month throughout the year, aside from August. Our yearly programme is advertised in advance where possible, and aims to appeal to a wide variety of writers across many formats and genres. In addition to guest speakers, we have previously held panels, manuscript review evenings, and even open-mic events.
All of our meetings are held at Goring Methodist Church, Small Hall – BN12 4XB. The sessions start at 19:30, and we advise arriving 15 minutes before to allow time for signing in.
2026
Short Stories: from inspiration to pitching
Alice Fowler is an award-winning writer of short stories and longer fiction. Her debut short story collection, The Truth Has Arms and Legs, was published in July 2023 by Fly On The Wall Press, an independent press based near Manchester. She has won the Historical Writers’ Association short story competition and the Wells Festival of Literature short story prize, with listings in many others. Alice also writes historical novels, exploring themes such as identity, rivalry and the boundaries between friendship and love.
Alice previously worked as a journalist and regularly reviews theatre and opera.
Instagram: @alicefwrites
Threads: @alicefwrites
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100046551485918
Bring your poems, stories, novel extracts, history, memoir, or anything else you have written and share it with us. No longer than 5 minutes. Don’t worry if you’ve never read out loud before, you will be guaranteed a welcoming and supportive audience.
Thursday 14 May 7.30pm (please arrive 15 minutes before to allow time for signing in.)
Goring Methodist Church, Small Hall – BN12 4XB.
This month’s meeting is all about poetry! The session will be led by Tony Earnshaw. Although the theme is poetry, and Tony has four poetry collections to his credit, he is also a novelist, librettist, playwright and children’s writer. Bring a notebook!
Thursday 9th April 7.30pm (please arrive 15 minutes before to allow time for signing in.)
Goring Methodist Church, Small Hall – BN12 4XB.
Mark Tournoff is a comedy writer, script writer and tutor at Sussex University. He is founder of the Fun And Laughter Mob (FALM). He was also Series 52 Champion of Channel 4’s ‘Countdown’ and has written and published a book about his experiences on the show, entitled Crucial, as well as two novels, entitled ‘A Nightmare in Paradise’ and ‘Sharp Right to Oblivion’.
2025
Bring your poems, stories, novel extracts, history, memoir, or anything else you have written and share it with us. No longer than 5 minutes. Don’t worry if you’ve never read out loud before, you will be guaranteed a welcoming and supportive audience.
(Santa hats, Xmas jumpers and other festive gear all very welcome!)
Thursday 11 November 7.30pm (please arrive 15 minutes before to allow time for signing in.)
Goring Methodist Church, Small Hall – BN12 4XB.
Does that voice in your head compare you unfavourably to other writers? Find endless other things to do rather than get on with it? Wonder if it’s worth the effort? Won’t call yourself a writer? And yet, you’ve got this idea or this story, you’ve been working on it a while now…
In this honest and inspiring session, Anna will share her experience of the challenges, surprises and joy behind her debut novel and her motivation as a writer.
She will introduce some of the tools behind the Artist’s Way, which was Anna’s gateway into writing and have been part of her practice ever since. You’ll get the chance to explore what motivates and inspires you as a writer and how to develop and hold on to your creative spark, even when that voice in your head is saying why bother.
Bio
Anna Hayward is the author of recently published Amazon bestseller, Broken Madonna, under the pen name Anna Lucia. Passionate about supporting writers, she is a writing mentor, editor, course and retreat leader and is Chair of Trustees of literature development agency New Writing South. She has been awarded support for her writing from Arts Council England, and also writes short stories, flash fiction and poetry. www.annalucia.co.uk.
Our next meeting is Thursday 9 October where our speaker is Laurence Penn, author of Bed No. 1 – A publishing journey.
Laurence is a West Sussex businessman who was one of the first pandemic patients to be put into a coma and has written a book about his survival experience. He was hospitalised with COVID-19 in March 2020. He spent 29 days in a coma and 47 days in total in Worthing Hospital.
He will explain the process of writing and editing the memoir, including the decision to self-publish, designing the artwork and website and the process of promotion.
We will be covering the AGM in a speedy fashion and then moving onto a poetry or prose open-mic!
Bestselling author and publishing industry expert Sara Starbuck will explore ideas for structuring a whole novel, individual chapter structure and the all-important first chapter. Come along with your Work-in-Progress, or get inspired if you just have an idea.
This month at West Sussex Writers it’s all about how to write a historical novel. Off the back of her success with ‘Swim’, shortlisted for 3 international historical novel awards, comes Lisa’s latest book ‘The Fastest Girl on Earth’, set in the 1900s-1920s, and she can’t wait to tell us about it!
Lisa has learnt plenty about the hows, whys and wherefores when it comes to writing ‘hist fic’ and she’s excited to share her hard-won knowledge.
Dee Blick is a multi-award-winning Number 1 bestselling author of 4 non-fiction books. In March she published her first fiction book, The Boutique; a collection of 9 gritty and poignant short stories.
Dee’s first self-published book had the L plates fixed firmly on the cover simply because she was lacking in confidence. Her second self-published book, The Ultimate Small Business Marketing Book reached 150 in the Amazon bestseller charts and won a top award from The Bookbag. Unexpectedly, Dee was offered a publishing contract by CITIC Publishing, China who bought the translation rights to this book. A publishing deal with Wiley followed for Dee’s third book which also became an award-winning number one bestseller. Her fourth book, on how to write a bestseller, won The Guardian newspaper 10 reads for entrepreneurs. Dee knows what it takes to promote your self-published book so that it’s in pole position to win awards, reach the bestsellers and stay there!
Dee will share her author story (essentially from addiction to fiction) and why she wrote The Boutique after writing business books, followed by a workshop exercise in how we can use our life experiences and intrigue in others to create relatable and interesting characters.
DOUG GOODRIDGE BIO
Aside from being a WSW committee member, and aspiring author of fiction, Doug has spent his entire professional career working with technology.
His career spans 30 years and various industry sectors, including banking, insurance, gaming, government, military, and Formula 1. Doug now works as a Chief Information Officer (CIO) for a large metals stockholding group and sits on various organisational boards.
STEVE SHEPPARD BIO
Steve Sheppard was born in Guildford and spent nearly forty years moving around Surrey before running out of places to live there and moving to Buckinghamshire and thence to Oxfordshire, where he spent a quarter of a century in a quirky village which thought it was in the Cotswolds, but wasn’t.
caught up with him and decided to head back to his roots. However, he forgot to stop when he reached Guildford and ended up in Petersfield in Hampshire.
Steve has spent his whole life trying to discover the secret of how to become a fully-functioning adult. He has so far failed. One thing he has learnt is that he ought to have tried writing a book forty years earlier than he did, although he also now realises that he should have become a celebrity first, as this would have made
selling it much easier. He currently has three spy thrillers with laughs to his name, all published by Claret Press: A Very Important Teapot (2019) set in Australia, Bored to Death in the Baltics (2021), not set in Australia and Poor Table Manners (2024), which takes place in Cape Town. These feature a fairly hapless hero, Dawson, and a considerably less hapless heroine, Lucy, together with varied
supporting casts, most of whom are not who they claim to be. The books have been read by approximately a million fewer people than Steve might have hoped.
Bring your notebook. This will be a practical session to explore some playful approaches to poetry-writing through a range of writing activities. Participants will experiment with some prompts and forms and games to enjoy the ‘beautiful constraints’ of the poetic form. It’s suitable for beginners to poet laureates(!)
We’ll consider what makes poetry different from other forms of writing, focus on how objects and visual images can be used to draw on memory and experience, and explore the interplay between language and poetic form.
Ted Gooda is a poet, playwright and ghostwriter, and taught English and Drama in secondary schools and university for nearly 30 years.
This month we will be hosting an exciting open-mic event, providing members with the opportunity to showcase their writing talents in front of a supportive audience. We invite all participants to read their original work aloud, whether it’s poetry, short stories, plays, or any other form of creative writing.
We always encourage a relaxed and inclusive atmosphere, allowing both members and guests to share their unique voices, engage with fellow creatives, and (if desired) receive constructive feedback.
2024
Meeting date: 12/12/2024 – 19:30
Meeting location: Goring Methodist Church, Small Hall – BN12 4XB
Have you ever wanted to bring your favourite book to life in a theatre? Are you tempted by the idea of writing a play and feel that adapting a novel might be a good place to start? Or are you simply curious about the alchemy of turning a novel into a stage play? In this session Kathryn offers a little bit of experience, a few anecdotes and a lot of food for thought for anyone interested in novels, theatre or both.
Kathryn is an English literature graduate and co-founder of Horsham-based Lights & Bushels Theatre Company. She is the author of 4 published full-length plays, 2 of which are adaptations of novels and have been staged in Australia, Canada and New Zealand, as well as the UK.
Meeting date: 14/11/2024 – 19:30
Meeting location: Goring Methodist Church, Small Hall – BN12 4XB
Graham will discuss going from being a member of a writer’s group to being represented by CMM and winning two 2-book contracts with Bonnier Zaffre in Marylebone, plus some of the hidden pitfalls writers face when they get that first contract.
Colin Reid, co-author of ‘Fever!’ will be joining us for this evening.
Fever – The Worthing typhoid epidemic of 1893 killed around 200 people and turned the town into a “city of the dead”.
We will be covering the AGM in a speedy fashion and then moving onto a poetry or prose open-mic!
Lisa Brace has been writing professionally for over 20 years, starting as a journalist working on newspapers. Her debut novel, Star Survivor, was published in March this year and was inspired by a dream about TV personality, Simon Cowell. She enjoys writing commercial, present day novels and historical fiction set in the early 20th century. Her first historical fiction novel, Swim, set against the backdrop of the First World War, was out in May 2024 and tells the fictionalised story of a real-life Olympian. Lisa also writes rom-com novellas as Holly Green and has two novellas published, Secret Valentine and Secret Santa. The next in the secret series is Secret Crush, out in August 2024.
This month’s meeting is a little bit different! Let us know as soon as possible if you would like to read your manuscript. We are looking for up to 8 volunteers to have their work critiqued. It can be any format or genre!
Stories are so much more than an idea. The evening will explore the many different ways in which stories originate, andevolve towards their final form. Their inspiration, sources and transformations, literary influences and, critically, how awriter’s emotional input (conscious or unconscious) can lend greater depth to a story.
Those attending are encouraged to consider a fictional story (not a poem, or memoir) of their own. What inspired them?What unexpected turns did they take in the writing? What was the emotional involvement of the author?
Workshops will include discussion of attendee’s stories and their particular genesis and development. Also, a look at starting a story even if you are unsure of where it will go.
Nicola Garrard has been shortlisted in several prestigious competitions, and her first book, 29 Locks, was picked by The FinancialTimes as one of their best books of 2021. Her words and poetry have been published in the Frogmaore Papers magazine, Mslexiamagazine and others. She gives talks for schools, libraries and colleges, and appears regularly on BBC Radio London.
WSW speaker for our March meeting is John Eddleston who has published over 70 books specialising in true crime. This experienced speaker will be presenting a talk on various true crime stories from the last century, where the audience will be participating in uncovering the evidence!
Daisy White, and Amazon best selling author of detective crime thrillers will be joining WSW in February. Daisy has had a varied career from cabin crew with British Airways, to first responder for the ambulance service. She is now a crime and thriller writer with nine books published.
Club Competitions
In addition to a rich programme of speakers and guests, we also have a long history of holding competitions within the club.
These competitions can be related to fiction, non-fiction, historical writing, poetry, screenplays or anything in between!
Competitions are often set and judged by our guest speakers, and we encourage all of our members to take part regularly, even if the subject or genre isn’t one that they’d normally cover.
Whilst we don’t offer prizes for our competition winners, we do have various trophies and salvers that we award to winners for some of our more prestigious or long-standing competition categories.
Recent Competitions
Competition
Members should create the opening 3-4 pages of a script for a play. Unlike the subject of the recent talk, these scripts should not be an adaptation of an existing story, instead, they should have original origins. There is no strict word count, however due to the spacing on script formatting (see examples attached), the final word count is expected to be within the 1000-1500.
Scripts should contain one or two short opening paragraphs to set the scene. Stage directions are not necessary. Please find below two example scripts from Kathryn, which should help guide anyone unsure of how to start or structure their entry.
Judges Guidance
“You don’t need to have the whole play plotted out in your head in order to write the opening few pages. I was recently acting in a play in Guildford called Entertaining Angels. The playwright Richard Everett happens to live locally and so he came to a few of our rehearsals and took part in a Q&A after one of the performances. And he revealed that he had no idea where the play was going when he started writing it. The play begins with the wife of a recently deceased vicar trying to have a phone conversation in her garden which is frequently interrupted by daughter trying to talk to her, her sister mowing the lawn and by the new vicar who has come to the view the house. He admitted that he thought of the phone call opening and started writing, but hadn’t yet worked out what was going to happen after that!”
Closing Date
Midnight on Thursday 13th February, with the winner being announced in the March WSW meeting.
Prize
There is no cash prize, however the winner will have their name engraved on the WSW ‘Drama’ Cup, which was first awarded to Stuart Colgate in 1994! The winner will be able to hold the cup until its next award.
Entry Method
All entries should be submitted electronically via email to entries@westsussexwriters.co.uk, with ‘Script Competition’ somewhere in the subject line. Please do not include your name or any other identifying information within the scripts themselves, as these will be submitted anonymously.
Rules
Please see below for full rules, however it should be noted that WSW competitions are open to members only (either Ordinary or Saver). Competitions are not open to guests. We would be more than happy to accept new membership enquiries at our next meeting, or via our website should you wish to enter this competition but are not yet a member.
Homework exercises judged by Colin Reid, our guest speaker in October.
Here are the three exercises included in the talk:-
- Write down the name of someone you know who is at least 70 years old and whom you can meet with soon after this meeting; this can be a relative, a friend or someone you know pretty well.
- Thinking about the person whose name you wrote down in Exercise 1, take fifteen minutes to write down everything you know about their family history.
- a)Make arrangements to meet with the person you have referred to in Exercises 1 & 2. Make a note of everything they can tell you about their family history in one hour maximum.
b) Make a 500-word record of what you now know about their family history. The judges will be looking for an interesting, coherent account of the family history of your chosen subject.
The deadline for submission is midnight on 14/11/2024. Results will be announced in the December meeting.
Provide a story of no more than 1500 words to be judged by Lisa Brace, who was our guest earlier in the year. The story can be set in any time period, including as recent as the 1980’s.
Deadline for submissions is midnight on 10/10/2024. The winner will be announced in the November meeting.
Good Luck!
WINNER – ‘The Dust We Breathe’ – Ted Gooda
2nd – “Moving Sands of Nubia” – Lucy Critcher
3rd – “The Jewel Thieves” – Rebecca Shtasel
HONOURABLE MENTION – “Prisoner of Light” – Inka Stephenson
Leaning on the lessons taught in the recent meeting, members should create a narrative of no more than 1000 words relating to an existing piece of their work. They should submit the narrative and the original excerpt for judging.
Write an engaging narrative commentary of between 500 – 1,000 words on one of your stories, incorporating some or all of the aspects below:
Influences
Story development
Influence of workshops or reviews
How this story fits into your body of work
What consideration of the story revealed about your writing
Your personal attachment to the story, however indirect
The deadline for submissions is midnight on 10/08/2024.
WINNER – Alan Boyce – ‘James Robinson and Roger Grimes’
HONOURABLE MENTION – Audrey Lee – Time and Chance
Guest speaker Nicola Garrard has set a competition based on the theme of ‘The Journey’. It must be non-fictional and ideally based on the experiences of the writer. It should be no longer than 1500 words.
The deadline for submission is 12/06/2024. The winner will be announced in the July meeting.
WINNER – Ted Gooda – Journey to Words
HIGHLY COMMENDED – Norman Allcorn – A Journey
Crimewriter Daisy White has set this years short story competition. The theme is Crime. The story must be under 1500 words in length and be fictional.
The deadline for entries is 11/04/2024, with the winner being announced in May.
WINNER – Douglas Goodridge with his entry ‘The Last Hurrah’.
Competition Rules
- All submissions must be original, unpublished at the time of entry and solely the work of the WSW member.
- WSW Competitions are open to paid members only.
- WSW Competitions are free to enter.
- There is no prize awarded for competitions, merely the honour of competing and potentially winning.
- Members may submit up to three entries per competition.
- Entries should be submitted electronically via email to the following address: entries@westsussexwriters.co.uk
- No entries will be accepted after the deadline for submissions has passed.
- Members are permitted to submit their entries to other competitions outside of WSW.
West Sussex Writers Membership
We rely on membership fees to keep the club running and continue providing an array of experienced guest speakers and challenging competitions. With this in mind, we operate different tiers of membership, designed to cater for everyone, regardless of frequency of visit or level of writing experience. If you are interested in becoming a member then please do get in contact using the button below.
We do not currently accept membership payments online, but payments can be made via post or in person at a meeting.
Saver Member
Our most cost-effective membership tier, for people who expect to attend the majority of meetings during the year.
Annual Fee: £40
Meeting Entry Fee: £0
Members Area Access: Yes
Eligible for Competitions: Yes
Ordinary Member
For people who cannot attend many meetings during the year, but still wish to be able to enter club competitions.
Annual Fee: £20
Meeting Entry Fee: £3
Members Area Access: Yes
Eligible for Competitions: Yes
Guest
Guests and visitors are welcome at our meetings. Guests can pay per meeting but are not eligible to enter competitions.
Annual Fee: £0
Meeting Entry Fee: £5
Members Area Access: No
Eligible for Competitions: No
We also offer a discount to Ordinary Membership – £15 p.a. for full-time students and unwaged people receiving benefits(not pensions). Students will also not be charged a meeting fee. Such applications must be accompanied by evidence of your status.
Get in contact with our membership team using the button below, or download a membership form and bring it to our next meeting.
About Us
Members of West Sussex Writers are an eclectic bunch. We have scriptwriters, literary novelists, science fiction writers, poets, saga writers, dramatists, creative writing tutors, children’s writers, journalists and biographers – among others – in our midst. Many, but not all, are published. Some have a lifetime of writing experience, others are at the start of their writing career, and a few haven’t written anything yet.
Our aim is to help writers in all genres, to encourage their work and offer advice, if wanted, towards publication or gaining a wider readership. We achieve this through a mix of talks, workshops and competitions, offering something different at every meeting.
So if you are a writer, or interested in writing, why not join West Sussex Writers? Despite our name and the fact that our meetings are held in West Sussex, you don’t have to be based locally to join us.
Our meetings are held on the second Thursday of each month (except August) at Goring Methodist Church, Small Hall – BN12 4XB
Our History
West Sussex Writers is one of the oldest writers’ groups in the country, having been founded by Francis O’Hanlon, a journalist and non-fiction writer, in 1937. The other founding members were Barbara Hector, Maida Butler, Vera Arlett and George King.
Initially, meetings were held in each other’s homes, but by the time the Second World War arrived there were too many members to be accommodated in a single living room, so meetings moved to a solicitor’s office in The Arcade, Worthing. The group (then known as West Sussex Writers Club) continued to meet during the war, but remained fairly peripatetic until 1962, when members settled on a regular venue: the Norfolk Hotel in Chapel Road, Worthing. It has been suggested that members had to enter by a special door, not through the hotel – for fear of scaring the regular guests, perhaps?
This wasn’t the only problem at the Norfolk. Members often disappeared to the hotel bar during the interval, and didn’t return for the second half of the meeting – so in 1967 meetings moved to Worthing’s Adult Education Centre. This strategy must have worked as the group continued to grow, and by 1990, the club was on the move again, this time to Heene Community Centre in Heene Road, Worthing. The first meeting there was presented by Simon Brett, who later became West Sussex Writers’ patron.
The group moved away from Heene Road for a few years, meeting at Field Place in Worthing, but returned a few years ago to Heene Gallery. In April 2016 the group moved to its present venue in the Goring Methodists Church Hall.
West Sussex Writers Club founded by Francis O'Hanlon
Meetings moved to The Arcade, Worthing.
After a period of time where the meetings were held at various locations, the Norfolk Hotel was settled upon as a regular venue.
Meetings moved to Worthing's Adult Education Centre to accommodate new growth.
A dinner is held at the Beach House Park Restaurant for 70 past and present members to celebrate West Sussex Writers’ 40th anniversary.
50th anniversary celebrations include a volume of poetry called “Green Leaf, Gold Leaf”.
Club venue moved once again to Heene Community Centre in Heene Road, Worthing.
£3,300 worth of lottery funding is awarded, due mostly to the efforts of member, Lawrence Long. The award arrives in time for the “Diamond Day for Writers” to mark the club’s 60th year.
An anthology of members’ work is published as part of the Brighton Fringe Festival.
A selection of members’ short stories is recorded onto a CD entitled “70- Not Out,” voiced by our patron Simon Brett, to mark our 70th anniversary celebrations.
The launch of our first national short story competition.
Meetings moved to the current venue in the Goring Methodist Church hall.
Our 80th Anniversary was celebrated with an Anthology of members' work and a Writers' Day Event.
We’ve had a host of members over the years, and membership now includes short story writers, poets, scriptwriters, ghost writers, editors, novelists, creative writing tutors and journalists. Many have written purely for pleasure, but some have enjoyed considerable professional writing success including Pauline Bentley, Carey Cleaver, Julie Coffin, Constance Cox, Beryl Fleming, Peter Guttridge, Alison Hawes, Jan Henley, Pat Hopper, Rosanna Ley, Fay Marshall, June Tate, Sue Walker, Pam Weaver, Malcolm Welshman, Stella Whitelaw, Susan Wright and Tracy Fells – to mention but a few.
With thanks to Nina Tucknott for original text and research.
Contact Us
Please do reach out if you would like to know more about West Sussex Writers, what we do, or if you are interested in becoming a member. Feel free to contact the club or the committee using the email addresses below.
General information or questions regarding the club.
For enquiries regarding memberships or renewals.
Anything relating to media content, publishing and social media.
For competition entries and questions relating to competitions.
To reach all of the West Sussex Writers committee members.
Social Media
In addition to updates on this website, you can follow our journey on social media, using the links below.
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