A
Andrew Okey
Guest
Litopians (UK-based Litopians, at least),
Something I posted about recently got hardly any views and I think I radically mis-sold it! So:
Last Friday I attended the 4th annual Graduate Creative Writing Fair in Manchester. This was totally brilliant for reasons I'll summarise below, and also wasn't disastrously expensive (£45) and, despite the title, you don't have to be any sort of graduate to attend (I've never done a creative writing course in my life and I chatted to delegates who had never studied in HE).
The day included a plenary, choices of two informative sessions (the one on how to get noticed by publishers - panellists included Julia Silk from MBA, and Sarah Hunt from the Saraband imprint - was especially valuable for me). There was also a choice of skills sessions [me and some other delegates got the chance to do voice-led writing exercises with the brilliant Clare Fisher] and then guaranteed pitch slots with two agents who have been carefully matched to your chosen genre(s). All the agents involved were utterly charming and lovely and provided great feedback on both the quality of our pitches and our writing/ideas - hey, I (almost) lost my fear of them! And, of course, I made lots of random network-y connections with people inside (or just hoping to be inside) the industry.
So, if you ever get the chance, I can really recommend attending this. It's an annual event - always early in November - and is run in association with Comma Press, so there are lots of chances to get know their staff, too. Website is - The National Creative Writing Graduate Fair
A.
Something I posted about recently got hardly any views and I think I radically mis-sold it! So:
Last Friday I attended the 4th annual Graduate Creative Writing Fair in Manchester. This was totally brilliant for reasons I'll summarise below, and also wasn't disastrously expensive (£45) and, despite the title, you don't have to be any sort of graduate to attend (I've never done a creative writing course in my life and I chatted to delegates who had never studied in HE).
The day included a plenary, choices of two informative sessions (the one on how to get noticed by publishers - panellists included Julia Silk from MBA, and Sarah Hunt from the Saraband imprint - was especially valuable for me). There was also a choice of skills sessions [me and some other delegates got the chance to do voice-led writing exercises with the brilliant Clare Fisher] and then guaranteed pitch slots with two agents who have been carefully matched to your chosen genre(s). All the agents involved were utterly charming and lovely and provided great feedback on both the quality of our pitches and our writing/ideas - hey, I (almost) lost my fear of them! And, of course, I made lots of random network-y connections with people inside (or just hoping to be inside) the industry.
So, if you ever get the chance, I can really recommend attending this. It's an annual event - always early in November - and is run in association with Comma Press, so there are lots of chances to get know their staff, too. Website is - The National Creative Writing Graduate Fair
A.
