Book Launch - 29 November 2008

Dave Lee will be launching his new book, Bright From The Well - Northern Tales in the Modern World at:

Rare and Racy,
164/166 Devonshire Street
Sheffield S3 7SG

2 p.m. on Saturday 29th November 2008.

There will be readings from Dave's book plus a performance of Waterfall Galdor by singing group Wasume.

All welcome.

New Anthology - Call for Submissions

From the PS Publishing news blog:

Allen Ashley is in the process of putting together a new anthology for PS Publishing. Entitled Catastrophia, it will be "a collection of stories loosely themed around the theme of catastrophes, disasters and post-apocalyptic fiction."

More information here.

Next Meetings

Here's the dates for the remaining meetings this year:

• 18 August 2008
• 15 September 2008 <-- NB: this is the actual, real date
• 2 October 2008
• 3 November 2008
• 17 November 2008
• 15 December 2008

Usual venue: upstairs room, The Old Queen's Head, Pond Hill.

A useful round up of writing links

They're right here, courtesy of Paul Raven's Velco City Tourist Board. Some excellent and very useful stuff there. Give them a read.

New Writing Prize - £50,000!

The University of Warwick has just launched the Warwick Prize for Writing, with a purse of £50,000. A panel of five judges, headed by China Miéville and including mathematician Ian Stewart and literary blogger Stephen Mitchelmore, will announce a list of 15 to 20 titles in October. A short-list of six titles will follow January 2009, and the winner will be announced the month after.

While the award describes itself as focused on innovative writing on a theme - this year's in Complexity - it's interesting to see it embrace genre fiction. Not all such prizes do... unless of course the writer doesn't identify as a genre writer. Like Jeanette Winterson, or Margaret Atwood, or PD James... Of course, it remains to be seen if Miéville's leadership, and Stewart's presence, will result in a list which includes science fiction or fantasy works. I expect we'll see something not unlike this year's Arthur C Clarke Award shortlist.

Something Worth Reading...

There's an interesting article on making writing groups work here on The Fix review site. It's all very much common sense, of course - or at the very least common courtesy. But it's worth reminding ourselves sometimes what it is we ought to be doing, both in our writing and in our commenting on others' writing.

July Meeting

Bit late posting this. Sorry.

This month's meeting - Monday 7th July. Old Queen's Head, upstairs, 7:30 pm.