Join us on Saturday 30th May – 10am to 11am for a 1-hour panel discussion with three Midlands-based writers (chair Leila Rasheed, Charlie Hill & Sue Brown), including short readings from the Royal Literary Fund archive.
About this event:
Most people experience feeling lonely at some point in their lives. Sometimes this drives them to write. Many people see writing as a lonely job, but it can also bring you into companionship. In this panel, we’ll discuss how we as writers work in company and how we work alone – and whether and when ‘being alone’ tips over into loneliness.Some of the questions we’ll explore include: Is writing always a lonely job? Where do we write best – in company or alone? How and when do writers experience loneliness? How does company and solitude feed the writing process, or drain it? Are you ever truly alone with a cast of characters in your imagination? Every writer is a different individual and there will be different opinions and fresh insights as well as shared experiences in this friendly and informal panel conversation.
About the authors:
Charlie Hill is a writer of novels, short stories and memoir. His first book, The Space Between Things (Indigo Dreams Press, 2010) was a coming-of-age novel set against the backdrop of the Century of the Self, the road protest movement and the Balkan wars of the mid 1990’s. He lives in South Birmingham and left school at 16, not returning to education until an MA in Creative Writing at Birmingham University in 2016. https://www.rlf.org.uk/writer/charlie-hill/
Sue Brown is a Birmingham writer of Jamaican heritage. Her work includes poetry, storytelling, and collaborations with various art forms such as music and dance. In 2018 she presented and narrated her first TV documentary for BBC4 titled The First Black Brummies, for which she won a Royal Television Society award and a MVISA (Movie Video & Screen award 2019).She co-founded NAKUONA which supports creative communities from African and Global Majority backgrounds on a local, national and international level. https://www.rlf.org.uk/writer/sue-brown/
Leila Rasheed is an author of around 15 works of children’s fiction. Her first novel for children, Chips, Beans and Limousines, was published in 2008 by Usborne. It was a Red House Award Read of the Year, translated into multiple languages and followed by two sequels. Most recently, her children’s historical fiction set in a realistically diverse Roman Empire, Empire’s End, was shortlisted for the Tower Hamlets Book award. She founded Megaphone Writers CIC, an organisation that mentors and supports emerging children’s writers of colour. https://www.rlf.org.uk/writer/leila-rasheed/