Congratulation to Frank McMahon who has just had three more poems published in the poetry magazine, “The Cannon’s Mouth”. 2018 is becoming a productive and satisfying year for Frank with poems published on-line in America on “The Poet By Day” and other poems accepted for publication later this year.

His poem “A Lark Ascends” is dedicated to the memory of Ralph Vaughan Williams and includes the lines:

“But I grasp the drive to capture bird-song,
wind-howl and the cries of the bereaved,
to work; no slackening before death took you

plans for weeks and months ahead, the only way
to face each day before the void. Melodiesdrawn thread by gossamer thread:”

Frank has also just recorded his play “A Death In Flanders” for Corinium Radio .

He said: “There is no doubt in my mind that being a member of Somewhere Else Writers Group has been a real stimulus to my work.”

Plotting for television, the possibilities of mosaic novels – and the difficulties of asking an artist to illustrate the line: ‘He runs towards the door and slams it behind him’ – these were just a few of the topics covered by writer Paul Cornell when he visited Somewhere Else  this week.

As a writer of science fiction and fantasy in prose, comics and TV – and one of only two people to be Hugo Award-nominated for all three media, Paul was brilliant person to talk about the differences in writing such varied forms.

It was also lovely to welcome members of Cirencester’s Catchword Writing Group to the session.

Paul talked about the experience of moving from fan fiction to actually writing episodes of Doctor Who for BBC TV. He has also written for Casualty, Primeval and Coronation Street, and is the author of  Shadow Police – a series of supernatural crime novels and the Lychford series of novellas. He writes Action Comics for DC, and Wolverine for Marvel and has won the BSFA Award for his short fiction, an Eagle Award for his comics, and shares in a Writer’s Guild Award for his television. It was a fascinating talk.

Paul also organises the annual Fairford Festival of Fiction. To find out more about his work, the festival and to sign up for his weekly newsletter do visit his website at  https://www.paulcornell.com

If you are asked about literary characters, pigs are unlikely to be among your first thoughts but they take centre stage in the latest broadcast from Somewhere Else Writers this Sunday ( June 24th). With his tongue firmly in his cheek, Richard Lutwyche presents a range of poetry and prose in which our porker friend is very much the hero – from children’s nursery rhymes through to Shakespeare.

The programme is broadcast on Corinium Radio at 4.30pm and will be repeated at the same time for the following three Sundays. If you miss it, it is also available in the ‘Broadcasts’ section of our website along with many of our previous programmes. Do listen and enjoy.

‘The Red Dress,’ a short story by Sophie Livingston, is in this month’s  (July) Woman’s Weekly Fiction Special.

It’s a realistic story about a magic dress that makes you look fantastic until midnight – at which point you say what you really think about people.

Sophie said: “It happens to me quite a lot and when it does I always blame the dress.”

Two of Stephen Connolly’s short monologues are being performed as part of Gloucester Scriptorium’s ‘The Gloucester Citizen’ event on Thursday 31st May at 19:30.

The monologues are based around characters inspired by life in the city of Gloucester and the event is happening in the Fountain Inn, Gloucester. Entry is free, but any donations (to fund the Scriptorium’s next project) would be more than welcome.

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’.