Stage Struck.... 16 September 2013

Our meeting began with announcements from the Chair. The Love Cafe poetry event had been a great success and generated interest from several potential new members who had come along to meet us.

HWG will be at the Books Born in Hastings event on Saturday 12^thOctober. Our new anthology ‘Animal Writes’ will be available, along with previous publications including ‘Strandline’. Books written by members will also be available on the day and Anne Hooker will be there with her recently published anthology ‘Inspiration’.

The remainder of the evening was devoted to the entries of our Mini-Play competition. As always with HWG the scope of the plays was broad. We had comedy, tragedy, drama and science fiction: tales of engineering apprentices in the 1970s; small scary, hairy creatures using writers to escape their dying planet; a young man searching for his Comanche roots; dodgy dealings and a robbery in London; the unexpected result of a meditation and sequins; a thoughtful before, during and after life experience and a nineteenth century who-done-it.

David Buchan journalism entries - 2 September 2013

Having missed a meeting during August, it felt distinctly like the start of the new ‘term’ as we met on Monday 2 September. This time, we presented our entries for the David Buchan journalism competition. This is annually in memory of one of our most popular members, the late David Buchan, well-respected Fleet Street journalist.  As ever, there were entries on a wide variety of topics – starting with the Hastings to Bexhill Link Road, greeted by groans of despair by all present, via the ‘squeezed middle’ – aged, via cooking, privatizing the Post Office, nuclear tests in Australia, waiting rooms, complaints to the Bedroom Tax.  As ever, our judge will have a hard time!

We welcomed another three prospective members of the group – we have been delighted with current levels of interest in joining the group, particularly from younger people.

Congratulations to our Chair, Jill Fricker, who has just won a National Association of Writers’ Groups short story competition