This year we are in urgent need of two volunteers - for the posts of Treasurer and Membership Secretary.

The efficient and reliable Rik Gammack   has been doing both but now wants to take a well-earned break for a while.   Please will you ask yourself if you could take on one or other, the club can't function without them.  Rik will gladly supply details to anyone who might be interested.

Alison will speak about how she came to write both fiction and non-fiction, introduce her detective series and talk about her experience of being published etc. 

She has worked in all kinds of jobs, from admin to electro-plating and from DJ-ing to IT management.  She didn’t always plan to become a full time novelist but can’t remember a time in her adult life when she wasn’t carrying a notebook and pen and jotting down her latest ideas.

Patrick grew up in Cambridge and is the author of Corn Dolls, Steel Witches and Cut Out, a trilogy set in Cambridge and the Fens. His books have been acclaimed by reviewers in publications as diverse as The Times Literary Supplement and The News of The World, and have been published successfully in Italy, Germany and Holland.

Join him as he talks about his own background in Cambridge, the way this has shaped his writing, and why he chose the area as the setting for his trilogy.

Since retiring from his life on the range, Alec has turned his hand to writing at his home in Cambridge.

His latest book is called A Way of Life and recalls his training in cattle management with the Argentinian gauchos and working as a jackeroo on a cattle station in Australia.

Broo is one half of Wade and Doherty Literary Agency. She has worked in publishing for twenty years and handles all genres, but is particularly interested in crime, cookery and women's fiction.

Fellow of Clare Hall specialising in British and American literature and writer on 1st World, Crimean and Vietnam Wars.

Come and enjoy listening to this interesting and original local author.  Glenn is a cartoonist who has written for comics and children's television, you may be familiar with Shaun the Sheep, Bob the Builder and most certainly with Spiderman at some point!  He will talk about his latest creation "Candle Man" and discuss writing children's fantasy and the development of wonderful characters.

Most authors desperately need characters but how can they find them? Introspection? Using family and friends? Wandering about pubs? And when they find the right people how should they treat them - like galley slaves (Nabokov) or should the author just put them in a room and wait to see what happens (Beryl Bainbridge)? Tim Love will introduce a series of workshop exercises to help you develop your characters so that readers might recognise them if they met them in the street. Bring paper and pen.

Tim Love's a longstanding member of Cambridge Writers. His poetry collection, "Moving Parts" (Happenstance) came out in 2010. His booklet of short stories, "By All Means", will be published later this year by "Nine Arches Press".