News

The Slough Writers 2008 Annual General Meeting has closed with another round of awards, competition results and review of the year.

The chairman noted it has generally been a good year for the group and a great way to build on the 40th anniversary.

Trophies were presented to the following members:

• Writer of the Year award to Kathleen Adkins.
• Taylor Award (for services to the group) to James Corrin.
• Newcomer of the Year Award to Lee Taylor.

It was agreed that the hard work of all members continued to make Slough Writers a brilliant and dynamic group.

The results of the poetry competition were also announced by Sue Evans and Jules Bowes of Reading Town Women's Guild. The competition theme was to write a poem in the style of the Cautionary Tales of Hilaire Belloc. Sue and Jules agreed that the judging was fun and challenging thanks to the high standard of entries, but the final results were as follows:

1. Joint 1st place: Lee Taylor with The Sad and Cautionary Tale of Lieutenant James Owbuthnot Mogg and Tony Matthews with How Terence had To Eat His Words.
2. 3rd place: Kathleen Adkins with Herbert.

Lee and Kathleen, 1st and 3rd in the competition:

Slough Writers member Lee Taylor had an outstanding acheivement when his short story, Unfinished Business, was shortlisted in the Bristol Short Story Prize. The shortlist comprised the top 20 stories out of over 1200 submissions from around the world.

Lee said he was surprised but gratified by this result as this was the first short story he has ever written.

We are pleased to announce that The Slough Writers Anthology, produced in 2007 to celebrate the group's 40th year, has now been released in electronic form.

The anthology is the perfect way to sample the breadth and depth of activity at Slough Writers.

You can download the anthology as a PDF (viewable with Adobe Reader).

Ted Jones has been invited to present his book, The French Riviera: A Literary Guide (ISBN 978-1-84511-455-8) at the Edinburgh International Festival of Literature (August 9-25, 2008). He will be speaking there on the evening of Monday, August 11th. The Literature Festival, part of the mammoth Edinburgh Festival, will feature more than 600 authors from over 40 countries.

Ted will be sharing the platform in the Peppers Theatre with Nicholas Murray, the famous novelist and biographer (of Bruce Chatwin, Kafka and Aldous Huxley, among others). Ted will be talking about, and reading from, his book,. The authors' presentations will be followed by signings of copies of their respective books in the Festival Bookshop.

As part of an ongoing series of events to launch the book on the French Riviera, Ted participated in a combined event featuring his book, together with an exhibition of the paintings of Bernard Payet, the illustrator of the book, at the Villa Luciane in La Gaude on Saturday, May 17, 2008. See picture below.

View previous news item on Ted’s book launch at Cannes.

The 2008 Short Story Competition had the theme: through the eyes of a witness. The brief was to write a story in which a real historical event is witnessed by the character(s).

The result was announced by the judge, local historian and writer, Hester Davenport:

• 1st. Terry Adlam with I Was That Close concerning the 1980 death of John Lennon.
• 2nd. Tony Matthews with Right of Passage about the opening of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
• 3rd. Roy Cecil with All Fools Triumphal relating Neil Kinnock’s last conference as Labour leader in Sheffield, 1992.

Two other entries were highly commended by the judge:

• Michael Pearcy with River of Destruction on the Lynmouth floods of 1952.
• Paul Stimpson with Waterman’s Tale concerning the death of Christopher Marlowe in 1593.

The photo shows judge Hester Davenport presenting the Story Competition cup to Terry with Tony and Roy.

Notes from Mike Pearcy and Kathryn Watson's evening, "Introduction to Play Writing", are now available online.

Slough Writers member Sally East will be signing copies of her new anthology MS Talent on Saturday 9th Feb. She will be joined by her co-author and her editor.

The anthology is a collection of short stories, poetry and memoirs, produced in aid of four Multiple Sclerosis charities.

To support Slough Writers and a good cause, catch Sally at Gerrards Cross Bookshop (in the high street), 10:00-12:00, on Saturday.

Well, here it is! Our new improved all singing, all dancing, impressive website. I hope you enjoy looking, using and discovering its cyber delights as much as the team did whilst designing and authoring it.

Talking of which, a massive well done and thanks to James, William and Ray for all their hard work in getting it to this point.

This is just the begining. Welcome to the future of Slough Writers on the Web. Once again, enjoy! Terry.

The spring term has started at Slough Writers. If you're a budding new writer, now's a great time to join up and meet like minded people. If you're a returning writer, welcome back!

The spring competition has also been announced; more details are on the Competitions page.

The group’s article competition for 2007 had the theme: Is religion relevant today? The two judges, Michael and Verity Elson, spoke of their criteria for evaluating the entries, mentioning the strength of rhetorical persuasion over reasoned argument in some entries. They noted some writers tackled the meaning of the word ‘religion’ while others were concerned with ‘relevant’ in the sense of beneficial or otherwise.

The winning articles were:

1st. Roy Cecil with Isms and Schisms

2nd. Tony Matthews with Ultimate Placebo

3rd. Michael Pearcy with Comfort of Firelight

Following the success of the hard cover version of his book The French Riviera: A Literary Guide for Travellers, Ted Jones launched the paperback edition at Cannes on the 17th November 2007. The photo shows Ted (centre) with illustrator Bernard Payet and clients at the launch signing. More details can be found on Ted Jones webite.

The French Riviera: A Literary Guide for Travellers by Ted Jones

The sunlight and the calm of the French Riviera have drawn countless writers into its embrace: the Cote d’Azur has provided the inspiration and setting for some of the greatest literature of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The French Riviera offers a literary tour of the region, covering the lives and work of the writers who found inspiration there – from Graham Greene and W. Somerset Maugham, who spent much of their lives there; through those writers whose work it dominates such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Guy de Maupassant; to those who simply lingered there.

Ted Jones’ encyclopaedic work covers them all, including Louisa M. Alcott, Hans Christian Anderson, JG Ballard, Simone de Beauvoir, Bertholt Brecht, Albert Camus, Casanova, Bruce Chatwin, Joseph Conrad, Charles Dickens, TS Eliot, Andre Gide, Ernest Hemingway, Victor Hugo, Aldous Huxley, James Joyce, Rudyard Kipling, DH Lawrence, AA Milne, Vladimir Nabokov, George Orwell, Sylvia Plath, Marcel Proust, Jean-Paul Sartre, Robert Louis Stevenson, Anton Chekhov, Leo Tolstoy, Evelyn Waugh, Oscar Wilde, PG Wodehouse, Virginia Woolf and WB Yeats amongst many others.

The French Riviera: A Literary Guide For Travellers may be ordered from amazon or from the publisher I.B. Tauris

This year’s Summer Competition was a self-judged and critiqued story competition. The story, for this fifth running of the popular format, had to be based or themed on one of The Seven Virtues.

The results were announced by the competition administrator:

1st. Tony Matthews with Honour Thy Father

2nd. Sally East with Thrills of the Chaste

3rd. Ted Jones with The Waiting Game

The winner of Guess the Author was Sally East, who correctly identified the author's style of every entry.

William Campbell won a national competition organised by The British Computer Society (BCS) with his short-story, Computer Dating. William was chosen as the over-16 winner of the BCS WriteIT competition by cult fantasy fiction novelist Jasper Fforde (left, in photo).

“The standard of work was incredibly high,” said Jasper. “I really loved the story that won. It was very imaginative.”

After the prize-giving in Swindon, William said: “It is very rewarding to know one’s story-telling entertains and engages other people. That’s one reason for writing.” The writer is also delighted with the prize money, enabling him to leap from a Windows 98 PC to a 21st century machine.

William’s winning story is published in PDF format on the BCS website Click for story The competition was part of the 50th anniversary celebrations for the BCS, the leading organisation for IT professionals.

To mark 40 years of Slough Writers, the group pulled out all the stops for a huge celebration this weekend. Taking over Maidenhead Sailing Club, there was food, drinks and dancing aplenty as the group partied while the sun went down.

Ending with words of support from famous authors and friends of the group, a fireworks finale welcomed the start of the next forty years.

Many thanks to all those who helped make this great celebration possible.

This weekend Slough Writers launched their new anthology to celebrate their 40th Anniversary year. The group had a display in Waterstones to present their work to the public. The anthology is the culmination of several months work and provides an amazing tribute to all the writers who've attended Slough Writers over the years.

On 4th June 2007 the group was invited to a private talk by Michael Meredith, the librarian at Eton College Library. Eighteen members and relatives travelled to the famous school in Eton to sit among numerous and priceless books. They listened avidly to Mr Meredith’s eloquent knowledge and amusing anecdotes.

The librarian concentrated his talk on the background to and stories behind some of the first folios and renown books in the library collection. There were samples for the members to look at and examine, ranging from Shakespeare through Gray, Byron, Austen and Dickens to Susan Hill and Harold Pinter.

Mr Meredith also expounded on samples of writers’ correspondence on display from the library. He offered insights to the sub-text in some of the letters.

The visitors experienced an extremely interesting and enlightening evening. To a person they agreed it was a memorable privilege to have handled the original manuscripts and letters.