Lytham Lives launches at last!

Amazon link



Woo hoo!!!!
At last - Lytham Lives - A Community in Writing launches today at a special launch at Park View Community Centre in Lytham. 

Lytham writer Alexandra O'Toole and I have had the most unbelievable palaver with our original choice of publishers - so we gave up and did it ourselves, and I have to say the finished product is cracking! :oP

The anthology is a part of the forthcoming Lytham Festival of Stories, a project dreamed up by Alex O'Toole and developed in conjunction with Cath Powell at Park View 4U, and with fantastic support from Lancashire County Council, Fylde Borough Council, and Arts Council England.

We ran writing and conversations-in-the-community workshops in Lytham at Park View and at St. Bede's High School to get the ball rolling, and opened out the invitation to anyone connected with Lytham to submit their contributions to the anthology, and then chose the final pieces to be included.  With specially-commissioned photographs from local photographer Ruth Brooks-Carter, the finished anthology is a fantastic slice of life writing, memoir, and poetry, and a fittingly resonant slice of Lytham past, present, and future - a real festival of stories. 

You'll be able to buy your own copy of the anthology from Park View Community Centre, Plackitt and Booth bookshop on Clifton Street in Lytham from 15th July, and from Amazon by clicking on the image of the book here:

Amazon link

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And the winners are...

The deadline for submissions to the Lytham Lives Anthology has been and gone, and we’ve had the difficult task of selecting the successful submissions for inclusion in the book.

We’ve had a fascinatingly eclectic pile of submissions to read through and consider, both in form and subject matter.  Life writing and poetry made up the vast majority of the entries, with some short stories also in the mix, and we’ve had great fun reading through them all.  It was particularly pleasing to see several entries which began during the writing and conversations in the community workshops we delivered in Lytham. 
Subject matter has ranged through stories of Lytham childhoods, school days and festival days, to tales of ordinary folk and their lives in Lytham, past and present, eulogies to mothers, eulogies to knickers (!!!), days spent wandering through Lytham – whether on foot or on bicycle, in rain, wind or glorious sunshine, and whether loved or hated! – and the endlessly fascinating ecological landscape of Lytham, which has been a recurring theme, along with dreams and memories of things past, and future possibilities, and a scattering of ghosts, geese, and of course, windmills.

Making the final decisions were difficult, and to some extent informed by the desire to create a book which has diverse themes and voices but which hang together to create a coherent whole, and with a fantastic selection of photographs old and new – some specially commissioned from a local photographer – the Lytham Lives Anthology will be a great memento of Lytham’s unique character, in both landscape and people.  A real festival of stories. 
Letters and emails are winging their way to the successful entrants, but we would like to heartily thank everyone who submitted their poems, life writing, and short stories to us as it has been a privilege to read all of your work – so thank you.

The successful entrants are H. A. Pearson, Doreen Riley, John Hobson, Robert Michael Boddy, Jean Cunliffe, Sarah Simpson-Bostock, Fay M. Ford, David Forshaw, David Williams, Joyce Warwick, Janet Lees, J. E. Cartmell, and ‘The Lytham Ghost’, Sir Cuthbert Clifton.

The Lytham Lives Anthology is part of the forthcoming Lytham Festival of Stories, due to take place over a 4 day festival weekend next May. It's going to be brilliant. You can keep track of what's happening on the Festival of Stories blog. I'll keep you posted on when the Lytham Lives Anthology is published.

In Conversation With ...

'Conversations with the Community'
for The Festival of Stories.

Check out The Festival of Stories blog with an update of the most recent community event in the lead up to The Festival of Stories, a brand new four day festival planned to take place in Lytham later in 2013.

I'm dead excited to be involved in this project, and the ‘Conversations With The Community’ at St. Bede's High School in January was a fabulously enjoyable event for the Festival build-up with members of the community sharing their stories.

Organised by local Lytham writer and resident, Alex O’Toole, in collaboration with community organisation, ParkView4U and with the aim of using storytelling and story sharing to connect generations within the community, twelve members of the Lytham community shared their memories of growing up in Lytham with a class of Year 9 pupils from St. Bede’s.

Organisers of The Festival of Stories are currently working with Lancashire County Council to bid for funding from The Arts Council in order to bring the event to the public.

And in the meantime, the deadline for submissions for The Lytham Lives Anthology: A Community In Writing is 5pm on 28^th February.
Some of those at the ‘Conversations With The Community’ event have been inspired to submit some of their creative writing, life stories, and poetry to The Lytham Lives Anthology so if you have any writing on the theme you can submit, get cracking because there's only 21 days to go...!

For more details about how to submit your poems, short stories or pieces of life writing go to: http://lythamstories.wordpress.com
~

Yes, yes, yes!!! Reading for Pleasure Campaign

The Society of Authors are campaigning to encourage reading for pleasure in schools and have written to Schools Minister, Nick Gibb, making recommendations regarding school libraries, teacher training and author visits, and to request a meeting to discuss practical strategies to further the Government response to the Henley Review and Ofsted’s Moving English Forward.

In their letter to Nick Gibb, they make the following three recommendations:

1. Primary and secondary schools should be required by law to have a school library and a trained librarian.
2. Teachers, in all stages of their careers, should be supported through a range of initiatives (detailed in the letter) to inspire a love of reading for pleasure in their pupils.
3. Schools’ use of author visits and longer residencies should be accredited by Ofsted.

Click here to read the letter in full.

They've got my support, yes yes yes!

See the Reading for Pleasure Campaign - Society of Authors for more information.