At our meeting on 25 February we welcomed Andrea
Samuelson, one of our favourite external experts, to judge our Memoir writing
competition. A former member of the group, Andrea is now a successful published
author and teaches creative writing locally. Her task this time was formidable.
She had to read, analyse and comment individually on 23 entries – a record for
one of our internal competitions.
In addition, as Andrea commented before announcing
the winners, life writing is far harder than it looks. We think it will be easy
to write about ourselves, but, as most of us discovered, it is hard to bring our
own ‘voices’ to life. Many of us had not tried life-writing before, and found
the exercise opened doors to memories and feelings we may never have fully
explored. As ever, Andrea’s sensitive and thoughtful feedback was both
illuminating and instructive.
From a very strong field, the eventual winners
were: in fourth place John Cole, with ‘Memories of a Great White Dope’, an
account of his experiences in a tough American boxing gym. Third was Mike Walsh
with the moving – and raunchy – ‘The Wine of Life’, describing his relationship
with his elderly father. Richard Holdsworth was in second place with his piece
about being an evacuee, ‘The Scorecard’, and the winner was Eileen Masters, with
the vivid ‘A Strange
Place to Picnic’, about her experiences in Afghanistan.
In addition to the competition feedback, we also
heard about plans for a 2013 group anthology, with a focus on animal tales.
Profits from this will be shared with selected charities. Members were asked to
volunteer to help edit the new book.
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