Stephen Connolly’s radio play ‘Sky Pilots’, joint winner of the BBC Solent Radio Playwright Competition, was  broadcast on BBC Solent on Friday 18th May 2018.

The play can be found on BBC iPlayer here, at around the 3:05:30.

Congratulations to Jim Moeller whose story ‘The Hired Hand’ has just been shortlisted for the Evesham Festival of Words short story competition. The winner, out of 10 finalists, will be announced on Friday June 29^th and all the stories will appear in the festival anthology.

The festival runs until Sunday 1^st July, more information is available here.

Somewhere Else writer, Iris Anne Lewis, is looking forward to seeing two of her pieces — ‘Octet’, a short abstract performance poem and ‘Song for Abererch’, a prose poem for eleven voices — published in ‘Domestic Cherry 6’.

Retreat West’s Climate Fiction anthology ‘Nothing Is As It Was‘ was officially released on Sunday 22nd April.

The book contains Stephen Connolly’s short piece ‘The Window Box‘ (an extract from a novel-in-progress) and is available from Amazon in both eBook and paperback formats.

Proceeds raised from the book sales will be donated to support the work of the climate action group, Earth Day Network.

Stephen Connolly’s radio play ‘Sky Pilots’ was recorded on 12th April before a live audience at Thornden Hall near Southampton.

The three winning plays in the BBC Solent Search for new Radio Playwrights competition – Ben White’s ‘The Family Way’, Gillian Palmer/Georgina Pitts’ ‘Searching’ and Stephen Connolly’s ‘Sky Pilots’ will all be broadcast by BBC Solent in May.

More details on Stephen’s blog.

Another success for Frank McMahon whose poem ‘Find Me Words’ has been chosen by Reuben Woolley for publication in ‘I am not a silent poet’ the online magazine for poetry and artwork protesting against abuse in any of its forms.

The central stanzas in the poem are these:

‘Find me powers to lay across
their desks and war-room floors broken
bones and flesh, find me powers to
make them cradle in their arms

the headless child, to salve her mother’s
napalm-shredded skin, unclog
the students’ gas-filled lungs, prise out
the shards of shrapnel while they order

more assaults.’

Frank said: “I write because I must, despite knowing that one lone voice, or even a million voices, may be helpless to prevent wars and conflicts. The distance between launching a war and the suffering which follows is so great as to destroy compassion, empathy and conscience.”

The full poem can be read here

Gloucestershire writers have joined forces to thank Rona Laycock for her work in encouraging and promoting local authors.

The monthly ‘Writers in the Brewery’ get-together at Cirencester’s Brewery Arts Centre has been a showcase and a source of inspiration for new writers for nearly 10 years, thanks to Rona’s hard work as organiser.

Members of Somewhere Else Writers and Rona’s own Catchword group paid tribute to her generosity in a presentation at Catchword’s Ashcroft Road base this month.

In a separate ceremony Rona was also named winner of a Cheltenham Arts Council Award for her services to Gloucestershire Writers’ Network. The network acts as an information hub for writers throughout the county – and also organises an annual competition offering local writers the chance to perform their work at the Cheltenham Literature Festival.

Respected writer, critic and editor Jim McCue stressed the importance of clarity and precision of expression in a masterclass for Somewhere Else Writers this week.

Jim, a former editor and columnist on The Times, dissected a number of texts, including pieces by the group, to illustrate how incisive analysis of the words and phrasing we choose could improve the quality of our writing.

He is joint editor with Christopher Ricks of The Poems of T. S. Eliot, named Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year. He has edited and given editorial advice on books for Penguin, Oxford University Press, Faber, the British Library and others.