Favourites and Links to writers' websites

RochesterLitFest

Rochester LitFest is organising a number of events and challenges in the run-up to the main festival in October 2013. 2012 events included The Garden Poetry Party in Eastgate Gardens Rochester, where Dickens's writing chalet is located, and Unfinished, bringing writers together to look at unfinished work and how to take this forward. Rochester LitFest is run by three local writers: Philip Kane, whose collection of poetry and images 'Unauthorised Person' is published with Cultured Llama; WOW magazine editor Emma Dewhurst; and blogger and screenwriter Jaye Nolan. More here. 

Ward Wood Publishing

A new independent publisher, established in 2010. Their fiction and poetry titles are well worth reading, both for the quality of the writing and the books. Amongst my favourite reads of 2012 is 'Happiness comes from Nowhere', a novel by Shauna Gilligan. I look forward to reading David Cooke's new poetry collection 'Work Horses', too.  

Maggie Harris

Maggie Harris was born in Guyana and has spent much of her life in the UK - in East Kent and now in Wales. Maggie is an award-winning writer of poetry, fiction and memoir. Amongst her many talents and skills, she is an artist, teacher and workshop leader. Her memoir 'Kiskadee Girl' was published in 2011 and her collection of short stories 'Canterbury Tales on a Cockcrow Morning' is published by Cultured Llama. Her first collection of poetry 'Limbolands' won the Guyana Prize for Literature in 2000. Find out more about Maggie Harris here.

Richard Thomas

Richard Thomas is a writer, poet and artist gaining quite a reputation as a performer of his poetry. His poems have that rare quality of working as well on the page as they do in performance. His poem "Dig" was shortlisted for the National Poetry Prize 2011, and it appears in his debut collection 'The Strangest Thankyou' published by Cultured Llama. Find out more about Richard Thomas here.

Bethany W Pope

Bethany W Pope's debut poetry collection 'A Radiance' is published by Cultured Llama. Bethany is an award-winning writer of extraordinary poetry and fiction. She is the most prolific writer I have ever encountered, working incredibly fast - Bethany has a genuine love of writing and really brings her worlds alive to the reader. Find out more about Bethany and read some of her poetry here. 

Vicky Wilson

Vicky Wilson is a writer, editor, publisher and educator. She is one of the founder members of WordAid, a Kent collective that publishes poetry to raise funds for charity, and a former Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year. I worked closely with Vicky on the promotion of 'strange fruits'; she is excellent at collaborating on community writing projects and events. Take a look at her attractive new website.

Message in a bottle poetry magazine

Message in a bottle is looking for poems about 'the unusual, the unsung and the overlooked...brave poems that are sent out into the world like messages in a bottle'. 

The Regenerate

A journal of words and images inspired by Medway, with a special emphasis on psychogeography. Read more here. 

Medway Eyes

An umbrella organisation that supports, promotes and collaborates with Medway artists and venues. They regularly stage exhibitions, gigs and multi-arts events, including the Oxjam Festival in Chatham, which takes place around the August bank holiday each year. Read more here. 

Urban Writers' Retreat

Urban Writers run a retreat one day a month in London. For those not able to get to the retreats, and those in need of a prompt to write, go to their website to be added to their email list for regular encouragement and inspiration.

Abegail Morley

Abegail Morley's poetry collection 'How to Pour Madness into a Teacup' (Cinnamon, 2009) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, 2010. Abegail's website site features interviews with poetry editors and work by featured poets as well as her own poems. Read it here.

Vanessa Gebbie

Highly readable blog from a top short story writer and teacher. I recently read her story collection, 'Storm Warning', which is stunning, and 'Short Circuit: A Guide to The Art of The Short Story', essential reading for writers and teachers of short fiction (both books published by Salt). her website is here and her blogspot here. 

Poets Corner

I was astonished to discover that my brother, John McCarthy, is in this video, Poets Corner on You Tube. John is a taxi driver, and was asked to be involved in this short film, an entry to the Reed Film Competition. A new career in acting awaits…

Medway Broadside

Medway Broadside is an independent news and culture for the Medway Towns in print and online. Contributions welcome on local issues, culture and sport.

http://www.themedwaybroadside.com/

Canterbury Poets

The Canterbury Poets website showcases poets from the Canterbury area and advertises their monthly events at the Jolly Sailor pub in Canterbury: second Sunday of each month, 6.30 - 8.30 pm. The site is produced in association with Conversation Paperpress and SaveAs Writers' Group.

http://www.canterburypoets.co.uk/

Bob Carling

Freelance writer, editor and musician, aka the Folk Bloke and my husband. Bob writes on science and society issues for Ekklesia, and is an experienced editor in Science, Technical and Medical publishing. He also undertakes editing and proofreading for student theses. Bob is managing editor for our publishing venture Cultured Llama.

http://www.carling.org.uk/

Acoustic Architects

Website of the Folk Bloke's band with info about the band and news of the latest gigs.

http://acousticarchitects.co.uk/

Heidi Colthup

Heidi lives in Kent and has been: a published poet, a columnist for a national magazine, a university lecturer, a short film maker, an artist who has exhibited with Tracey Emin, a goat keeper, a chicken keeper, a tractor driver, a farmer's wife, a Primary school teacher, a mother, and a dreamer. She has a grand masterplan which involves reading books in bed while eating cake but until that comes to fruition she divides her time between writing, teaching and editing the fiction for Open Wide Magazine.

http://heidicolthup.blogspot.com/

Writers' Hub

The Birkbeck Writers' Hub is an interactive web portal with fiction, poetry, reviews, audio lectures and writers' resources. I look at this on a daily basis and highly recommend it.

http://www.writershub.co.uk/

June English

Kent-based poet, workshop leader and tireless promoter of poetry - June runs a regular poetry workshop at Waterstones, Rose, Lane, Canterbury, on the 4th Thursday of each month at 6.45pm.

http://www.juneenglish.co.uk/

Living With Wheels

Living With Wheels is an ad hoc collection of thoughts and opinions put together by Helen Aveling begun in about 2005. It has insights into what it is like for her having grown up with Cerebral Palsy as well as Helen's commentaries on things that have had an impact on her life. It includes things that bug her, like being told how 'brave' she is when she feels that she has just got on and done things, finding ways round her physical limitations. Helen has also edited a book that examines the way physical disability has been used in fiction primarily for girls in the twentieth century. Published in 2009 by Bettany Press Unseen Childhoods is a work of love and exemplifies how independently-minded Helen is. She is currently working on a fiction book, The Last Robot, and is being mentored by Maria McCarthy.

Conversation Poetry Quarterly

This started as a print poetry journal, and is now a high-quality online international poetry journal, with a new paper-press venture. Latest edition, and previous ones, available online (or to download in basic pdf) at:

http://conversationpoetry.co.uk/

Listen to a daily bedtime story

http://www.miettecast.com/

Some useful links for publishing opportunities from Heidi Colthup

http://www.poetrylibrary.org.uk/magazines/

This is the Poetry Library at the Southbank (which coincidentally holds copies of Maria's poetry books we found out last night!) the link here directs you to either printed magazines or online ezines which have the same standards as the printed type.

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/index.php?s=083e04863b0ca4bad9ca999e5bd239f5

This is an excellent forum called Eratosphere which requires a 'static' email address (not a hotmail or gmail one) and is regarded as a professional site - the poet A E Stallings posts regularly on there which is how I found it. After providing feedback on other writers' work you can post your own. The site is part of Able Muse magazine, which is also listed by the Poetry Library.

For both poetry and prose fiction there is http://www.youwriteon.com/ , which is supported by Random House as well as the BBC and others. It works on a similar basis to Eratosphere - you review others work and they in turn look at yours.

Reviewage

Stephe Morris has a new website www.reviewage.net

The Medway-based writer and music lover is a regular reviewer for BBC Radio Kent and Radio Gloucester. The site also has a lovely animated graphic of a record player. Bring back vinyl, that’s what I say!

Tina Lawlor Mottram

Poet, artist, environmentalist, workshop leader, allotment gardener... the list goes on.

http://www.serpentinacreations.com/

Katherine May

Katherine May is an author of both prose and poetry, including Ghosts & their Uses (2006) and A Diary of Slow Progress (2007). She is currently working on a novel set in 1930s Gravesend. Glamorous locations are not her speciality. Her first novel, Burning Out (2009), has just been published by Snow Books.

In order to subsidise the writing, she works as an arts project manager and workshop leader. If she gets any time to spare, she knits, paddles in the sea, and over-feeds her husband.

http://www.katherinemay.co.uk/

Sarah Salway

Writer and teacher Sarah Salway has written two novels and was a collaborator on the marvellous Messages. Her novel, Something Beginning With, is one of my favourite reads.

http://www.sarahsalway.net/

http://www.sarahsalway.blogspot.com/

Rachel Taylor

Rachel Taylor is primarily an opera singer, but enjoys writing the occasional song, poem and piece of prose along with the odd foray into painting.

http://www.rachelhtaylor.co.uk/

Ban the Mind Reader

I have come across this weird and wonderful site run by Barry Hutchings, of particular interest to my Medway readers:

http://www.banthemindreader.co.uk/

Friday Poems

Get two poems in your inbox every Friday by sending an email to Tom Poston of Friday Poems fame

[email protected]

The Poetry Kit

The Poetry Kit produces a monthly newsletter with news of books, courses, events and competitions. Medwaymaria.co.uk is a 'Poetry Kit recommended site'.

http://www.poetrykit.org/

Cinnamon Press

This is a quality small press, which also runs several competitions with publishing opportunities

http://www.cinnamonpress.com/

Medway Mermaids

Women’s writing group

http://www.medwaymermaids.btik.com/

Susan Wicks

Susan Wicks is the author of six collections of poetry, four of which, including House of Tongues (Bloodaxe, 2011) have been a PBS Choice or Recommendation, as well as three novels, the most recent of which, A Place to Stop (Salt, 2012) was a White Review Book Group Choice. She has also published a short, formally experimental memoir, Driving My Father (Faber, 1995), as well as a collection of stories, Roll Up for the Arabian Derby. Her first collection of poetry won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, and more recent work has been shortlisted for both T.S. Eliot and Forward Prizes. Her translation of the French poet Valerie Rouzeau, Cold Spring in Winter (Arc) was shortlisted for both the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize for Literary Translation and the International Griffin Prize for Poetry, and won the 2010 Scott-Moncrieff Prize. She has read her work on national radio and television and in the National Theatre, as well as in many other contexts. She works freelance as a writer, teacher and translator, and is currently preparing a second book of Rouzeau translations.
http://www.poetrypf.co.uk/

http://www. contemporarywriters.com/

Moniza Alvi

I was at a poetry workshop run by Moniza Alvi in 2006. It was for poets shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize at the University of Kent. She is such a gentle teacher, and so self-effacing. I particularly like her work on the theme of the dual personality that comes from being raised by immigrant parents in England. This influenced the Mitchelstown sequence in my collection strange fruits.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moniza_Alvi

Kate Clanchy

I heard Kate Clanchy read at Chatham library a few years ago, on International Women’s Day. It’s good to hear a poet perform their own work; you get so much more from their poems. I was also in awe of her as she’d had twins about a month previously and was still managing to find time to write. During the time they slept in the afternoon, apparently.

http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/profile/?p=auth125

Patience Agbabi

Another Chatham library event! Everything performed from memory The best performance poet I have seen. And now the new Canterbury Laureate

http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth163

John Hegley

Who else could write a poem about an amoeba, turn it into a song and get a Chatham crowd singing it? He is also proud to wear glasses.

http://www.johnhegley.co.uk/

Katherine Sturtevant-Stuart

Katherine found me on Facebook, through a book review that I had written. An author of young adult historical fiction, Katherine lives in Berkeley, California

http://www.katherinesturtevant.com/

The Poetry Library

Based at the South Bank Centre in London, the Saison Poetry Library houses the Arts Council Poetry Collection, and hosts an online archive of poetry magazines. I visited the library recently and met an American poet, Jack Anderson. 'Us poets, we're shameless,' he said, as we both searched for our own poems in the library (his in book form, mine in various poetry magazines). How true... but the joy of finding your work in a library!

http://www.poetrylibrary.org.uk/

http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/

Lynne Rees

Formerly Kent -based poet and fiction writer, now based in France, Lynne runs an online poetry workshop. For inspiration, energy and originality, visit…

http://www.lynnerees.co.uk/

http://applehousepoetryworkshop.blogspot.com/

http://anopenfield.blogspot.com/