Fulbourn Library and The Arts Extravaganza
Saturday 7 July Anne Worthington from the Library Services read stories. |
Sunday 8 July we had a very successful Creative Writing Workshop. Seven of us, with very little writing experience, sat down wondering what to expect. Jenny O'Brien quickly got us involved. I think I can safely say that, apart from the two children who with the confidence of youth knew they could do it, the rest of us were surprised at how within a five minute time limit we had all created stories which would have done credit to Roald Dahl.
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Thursday 12 July we were very lucky to welcome Jill Paton Walsh to the library to talk on ‘Being a Writer'. She outlined a career of more than forty years, writing children's books, literary novels and crime fiction, in a talk that considered each particular genre, but also the hard work and professionalism needed to be an author. Following the talk she answered questions from the floor before joining us for wine and refreshments. It was a truly fascinating evening.
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Author Talk - Rebecca Stott
was a great success. She told us how research into Newton's time at Trinity College had uncovered several mysterious deaths around the time he was made a Fellow of the College, and she was attempting to write this up in some way. She had wanted to write a novel for some time, and the plot of Ghostwalk had come to her “in the back of a taxi”! The 17th century mysteries were being investigated by a young historian in Cambridge, who became involved in a present-day murder plot in the City. |
Author Talk - Jim Kelly
Local Author, Jim Kelly talked to an audience of over 40 people, who were fascinated to hear about the Locked Room Mystery i.e. an event/murder, which takes place in a room with all doors and windows locked. He gave examples from The Bible, Enid Blyton, Edgar Allan Poe and Conan Doyle. He illustrated his talk with slides and showed us a picture of his ‘shed' where he writes for three hours every day. He wanted to explore and update the ‘locked room' scenario in his latest book, Death Wore White, In his shed he has a line of toy vehicles to set the scene. He imagined the traffic stationary in snow, which is the boundary for his ‘locked room'. The person in the front vehicle is alone and dead, with no footprints to or from the vehicle. Jim Kelly uses real places for his inspiration but may mix them up to suit the story. His latest book is set in Kings Lynn and the North Norfolk coast. East Anglia is a popular setting for crime writers with its huge skies and flat landscape with nowhere to hide. |
Saturday 26th July 2009 - A book launch at Fulbourn's new Library
Fulbourn Village Library moved into new premises in May in the Swifts, Haggis Gap. The Library received a grant from the Lottery funded Awards for All programme in January to run a Darwin Writing project in conjunction with Fulbourn, Great Wilbraham and Teversham Primary Schools. The project provided a poet, Clare Crossman, for some time in each school to support writing inspired by the life of Charles Darwin and his voyage in HMS Beagle. Some of that writing has been collected into an anthology and printed, with a cover designed by one of Fulbourn's pupils. |
On Saturday, 26 of the children involved, including some from each of the schools, met in the Library and read their poems in front of an audience of some 80 people. They were thanked by Professor Rebecca Stott, author of ‘Darwin and the Barnacle', who congratulated the children on their work.
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Author Talk - Clare Clark
We were very lucky to spend an evening with Clare Clark, who came to talk to us about writing her her new book, Savage Lands. Clare told us that she is a disciplined writer and loves history and does a lot of research for her novels. She has a 'shed' in the garden where she does her writing. Clare took questions from the floor and told us that her favorite book as a child was Black Beauty. About sixty people came along including some of our teenage members, making it a very memorable evening. |