This article needs additional citations for verification .(June 2014) |
The Writers' Summer School | |
---|---|
Genre | Writers' conference |
Frequency | Annually |
Venue | The Hayes Conference Centre |
Location(s) | Swanwick, Derbyshire |
Country | United Kingdom |
Inaugurated | 1949 |
Website | www |
The Swanwick Writers' Summer School is an annual writers' conference held at The Hayes Conference Centre, near Swanwick, Derbyshire. Founded in 1948, and first held in the summer of 1949, it is believed to be the oldest independent writers' school in the world.
Established as a charity and run on a not for profit basis, it was inspired by the London Writers Circle. Early celebrities that featured at the School included, Vera Brittain, L.P. Hartley, Hammond Innes and Arthur C. Clarke [1] [2]
The first chairman was Cecil Hunt, a chairman of the London Writers' Circle. Early delegates included the booker prize nominee, Barbara Pym, one of whose novels, No Fond Return of Love, is inspired, in part, by Swanwick itself. [3] [4] Associated with the school for over fifteen years as member, host and lecturer was Booker Prize Winner Paul Scott. He refers to the role Swanwick plays in creative writing in his published essays. [5] [6]
Over the years Swanwick has played an important role in the social development of creative writing. [7] [8]
Established postwar, it formed part of the continuing process of democratization of writing begun by many amateur groups in the 1920s and 1930s. [1] From its founding in 1948, the aim of the school has been to provide a social and educational framework for the development of creative writing skills. [7] Its role in the establishment of creative writing in the UK has meant that it has been a platform for eminent speakers, from Hammond Innes in 1952 to Sir Terry Pratchett. [8] It has also been closely associated with the development of women's writing. [9] Members range from seasoned authors with numerous published books to those new to writing. The inclusive community is designed to enable the sharing of experiences, best practice and support for individual writers' creative writing.
Derbyshire Record Office houses the school's historical records, reflecting its importance in the development of creative writing in the UK. These archives (ref: D5886) include the school minutes; comment books and correspondence.
Noted authors who have been members of the school over the years include Eleanor Burford, John Boland, Garry Hogg, Barbara Pym, Vivian Stuart, Paul Scott, Nina Bawden, Carla Lane and Margaret Drabble. [5] [8]
In 2005, the School obtained a grant from Awards for All to launch the TopWrite project to support young writers and help close the gaps between the commercial, literary and academic writing worlds.
The Hopwood Awards are a major scholarship program at the University of Michigan, founded by Avery Hopwood.
Barbara Mary Crampton Pym was an English novelist. In the 1950s she published a series of social comedies, of which the best known are Excellent Women (1952) and A Glass of Blessings (1958). In 1977 her career was revived when the critic Lord David Cecil and the poet Philip Larkin both nominated her as the most underrated writer of the century. Her novel Quartet in Autumn (1977) was nominated for the Booker Prize that year, and she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Alfreton is a town and civil parish in the Amber Valley district of Derbyshire, England. The town was formerly a Norman Manor and later an Urban District. The population of the Alfreton parish was 8,799 at the 2021 Census. The villages of Ironville, Riddings, Somercotes and Swanwick were historically part of the Manor and Urban District, and the population including these was 24,476 in 2001.
Stony Brook Southampton is a campus location of Stony Brook University, located in Southampton, New York between the Shinnecock Indian Reservation and Shinnecock Hills Golf Club on the eastern end of Long Island.
Creative writing is any writing that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature, typically identified by an emphasis on narrative craft, character development, and the use of literary tropes or with various traditions of poetry and poetics. Due to the looseness of the definition, it is possible for writing such as feature stories to be considered creative writing, even though it falls under journalism, because the content of features is specifically focused on narrative and character development. Both fictional and non-fictional works fall into this category, including such forms as novels, biographies, short stories, and poems. In the academic setting, creative writing is typically separated into fiction and poetry classes, with a focus on writing in an original style, as opposed to imitating pre-existing genres such as crime or horror. Writing for the screen and stage—screenwriting and playwriting—are often taught separately, but fit under the creative writing category as well.
No Fond Return of Love is a novel by Barbara Pym, first published in 1961.
Collaborative fiction is a form of writing by a group of authors who share creative control of a story.
Jewell Parker Rhodes is an American bestselling novelist and educator.
Cirilo F. Bautista was a Filipino poet, critic and writer of nonfiction. A National Artist of the Philippines award was conferred on him in 2014.
The Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) is a nonprofit literary organization that provides support, advocacy, resources, and community to nearly 50,000 writers, 500 college and university creative writing programs, and 125 writers' conferences and centers. It was founded in 1967 by R. V. Cassill and George Garrett.
The Hayes Conference Centre is a group of buildings in Swanwick, Derbyshire, UK which are used for conferences and other functions. The building which now houses the centre's reception was built in the 1850s as a private residence and named Swanwick Hayes. Since the early 1910 however it has taken up its current usage, apart from the Second World War years when it was a POW camp for German and Italian prisoners. It was the second camp to fail to hold the famous German escapee Franz von Werra, "The One That Got Away". The escape tunnel can still be seen at the conference centre.
Shelly Lowenkopf is an American writer and editor. He was an instructor in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California from 1974 until 2008. In 2012, he was appointed visiting professor at the College of Creative Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara.
Thomas Michael Maschler was a British publisher and writer. From 1960, he was influential as the head of publishing company Jonathan Cape over a period of more than three decades. Maschler was noted for instituting the Booker Prize for British, Irish and Commonwealth literature in 1969. He was involved in publishing the works of many notable authors, including Ernest Hemingway, Joseph Heller, Gabriel García Márquez, John Lennon, Ian McEwan, Bruce Chatwin and Salman Rushdie.
Cognitive science and linguistic theory have played an important role in providing empirical research into the writing process and serving the teaching of composition. As for composition theories, there is some dispute concerning the appropriateness of tying these two schools of thought together into one theory of composition. However, their empirical basis for research and ties to the process theory of composition and cognitive science can be thought to warrant some connection.
Ann Hood is an American novelist and short story writer; she has also written nonfiction. The author of fourteen novels, four memoirs, a short story collection, a ten book series for middle readers and one young adult novel. Her essays and short stories have appeared in many journals, magazines, and anthologies, including The Paris Review, Ploughshares,, and Tin House. Hood is a regular contributor to The New York Times' Op-Ed page, Home Economics column. Her most recent work is "Fly Girl: A Memoir," published with W.W. Norton and Company in 2022.
Melissa Febos is an American writer and professor. She is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, Whip Smart (2010), and the essay collections, Abandon Me (2017) and Girlhood (2021).
Gail Sidonie Sobat is a Canadian writer, educator, singer and performer. She is the founder and coordinator of YouthWrite, a writing camp for children, a non-profit and charitable society. Her poetry and fiction, for adults and young adults, are known for her controversial themes. For 2015, Sobat was one of two writers in residence with the Metro Edmonton Federation of Libraries. She is also the founder of the Spoken Word Youth Choir in Edmonton.
Laraine Herring is an American writer of both novels and nonfiction books. Laraine's poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in various anthologies and magazines, including Midnight Mind and Walking the Twilight: Women Writers of the Southwest. She was awarded the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grant for her fiction, and her non-fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
David Starkey is an American poet and academic, and former poet laureate of Santa Barbara, California.