Successes

Home News Membership Meetings Calendar Homework Competitions Publications Successes Links

Successes

The Circle and its members have enjoyed successes in a wide variety of literary activities:

Congratulations to Claudette - her play “All they Need is Love” which was produced at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre in Kentish Town, and ran successfully for three weeks in 2007, was short-listed for the 17^th Meyer-Whitworth award this year.
Unfortunately, although having been short-listed, the play was not one of those chosen to be performed at the National Theatre.

Congratulations to Elizabeth - her second novel has been accepted by Robert Hale and will be published in hardback, probably in time for Christmas.

Congratulations to Chris who won two first prizes in the Basingstoke 2008 Arts Festival.

She is seen here with the Arthur Attwood cup awarded for her article “A Matter of Convenience”
and the Jim Briggs cup for her sonnet “Escape.”

Click here for details

Barbara has had a short story accepted by The Countryman magazine. It is called “The Squealers” and is set during the Second World War when her family lived in Bristol. The story is about two piglets who were given to her mother as a birthday present.

She hasn’t been given her a publication date - but it will probably be in the May edition.

Barbara has also had a story published in the hardback Yours 2008 yearbook.

The story was originally called ”The Feel Good Factor” but the editor changed the title to “Knowing Mr. Right.”

Congratulations to Richard who is about to publish his book: “Six Spoons of Sugar” the reminiscences of a WWII evacuee - after five years of writing, three Publishers and four Designers…

It has come second (twice) in Lifewriting at the Winchester Conference – the award sponsored by the Queen’s English Society.

Click here to see the whole cover and to read more about the book.

Congratulations to Liz whose article appeared in February’s issue of Cornwall Today. This is the first article that Liz, who is an American, has had published in this country.

Congratulations once more to Jo Baker for coming third in the Writers’ Magazine “Wheelchair” Competition. Her story, “Can’t Walk Away” can now be seen at www.writersnews.co.uk/showcase/jobaker/default.asp

Congratulations to Jo Baker – her short story “The Daffodil Contest“ has been accepted by 'My Weekly' magazine and it will appear in their spring edition.

Congratulations to Elizabeth - her latest novel, “The Wild Card”
a Regency romance set in 1810, has been accepted by Robert Hale
and is to be published in hardback.

Four members have achieved success in this year's competitions of NAWG
(National Association of Writers' Groups):

Chris was the winner in the humorous poem category with “Go Down Fighting.” Click here to see her receiving her prize from Denise Robertson who is the patron of NAWG. The main prize consists of an engraved crystal paperweight in the shape of a book, together with a copy of The Writers and Artists Year Book 2008, a pen and a certificate. The festival weekend was held at St. Aidan’s College, Durham, and was greatly enjoyed by all.

Jan Springer was the winner of the Children’s novel award with “Mission On, Like it or Not,” but was unable to attend.

Chris was also runner-up in the formal poem category with her sonnet “Freedom.” Barbara Smith was highly commended for her travel article “The Land of the Dodo,” and Colin Ferguson was highly commended for his formal poem entitled “The Tragedy.”

July 2007 - Barbara Smith and Dick Sawdon Smith achieve success against international competition in a short story competition run by Radio Heartbeat based at Monklands Hospital in Airdrie Scotland. The competition was advertised via the internet to all writers' groups in the UK. The organisers were inundated by entries and surprised to receive some from America, Australia. New Zealand, France, Italy and Turkey.

All the stories had to be suitable for reading on the radio and the final judge was Janice Long of BBC Radio 2. Barbara Smith was runner-up with 'Circumstantial Evidence', a story of an elderly couple who find a body in their living room but are more concerned with who is going to pay for the cleaning of their blood stained carpet. Dick Sawdon Smith took third place with 'A Watered Down Protest', which tells of a young suffragette who puts her romance in jeopardy by making a protest at Henley Royal Regatta. The winner was a writer from Glasgow, whose story was in the form of a conversation in a pub. As well as being read on the radio the winning stories are also being included in an anthology.

Dick Sawdon Smith has won the Sony Broadcast Cup for short stories at Basingstoke Festival of Music and Arts for 2007.

This is the sixth time in the last seven years that he has won this award!

In order to publicise the creative writing section of the festival, Dick has produced a short booklet containing the six winning stories which will be given away free at the prize giving in June.

The 2007 anthology, ‘Hidden Depths’ was short-listed for the National Association of Writers Groups (NAWG) Annual Anthology Competition.

“The Crocodile Under the Bed“ by Barbara Smith has won the Writing Magazine’s ‘Bravery’ short story competition and is published in the December 2006 edition of Writing Magazine (click here to read it).

Dick Sawdon Smith won the Sony Cup for short stories at Basingstoke Festival of Music and Arts for 2006, with 'Letters Home' a tale of a National Serviceman's devotion to writing home from his posting in Aden in the 1950s. Judge Rosemary Trollope called it “an excellent, professional entry in a class on it's own.” It also won the Richard Watterson Cup for the best entry in the Adult writing class.

Dick was also presented with a Highly Commended Certificate at the National Association of Writing Groups' National Writing Festival at Durham in September 2006, for his entry in the competition for articles on a 'How to' theme. Dick's was called “How to Beat Road Rage.”

“A Literary Pot-pourri” One of our most notable achievements was in 1995 when the Circle was presented with an award and cup by the magazine Writers' News and the David St John Thomas Charitable Trust for the best Writers' Circle Anthology. The win for the anthology inspired some further poetry from one of the members, Eileen M. Beasley.