Join our judging event of our annual short story competition with Helen Marshall as the juror.

Helen is a Lecturer of Creative Writing and Publishing at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England. Her first collection of fiction Hair Side, Flesh Side won the Sydney J Bounds Award in 2013, and Gifts for the One Who Comes After, her second collection, won the World Fantasy Award and the Shirley Jackson Award in 2015. She is currently editing The Year’s Best Weird Fiction to be released in 2017, and her debut novel Everything that is Born will be published by Random House Canada in 2018.

An AGM may not be anyone's idea of a great night out.  Yet this is actually  our general forum and opportunity to have a say in how things are run.  The Committee is, after all, made up of its own members, we consider ourselves forward-thinking and open to new ideas, so please come along and let us hear from you. 

Julian is a longstanding partner in the Blake-Friedmann literary agency.

This is a members-only competition. Bring along a printed story of not more that 250 words. It must have a title, although this is not part of the word count. Stories will be read aloud anonymously by a single reader to ensure a uniformity of delivery. Members will then cast votes to determine the winner. The prize is a box of chocolates.

5.00 – 8.30 pm at 22a Riverbank, Littleport

Our member Siobhan Carew and her husband have kindly made their farm available for this event. There will be a charge of £5 per head, and members are welcome to bring guests. You must also bring a dish (sweet or savoury) and some drink (whether alcoholic or not) to share. The farm is half a mile from Littleport rail station.

The summer timetable may change, but at the moment there is a train from Cambridge at 4.35 pm which arrives at Littleport at 4.48pm, and a train back leaves Littleport at 8.58 pm, arriving back in Cambridge at 9.22 pm.

Members may wish to share lifts, so if you can either offer one, or need one, please contact the Secretary, Siobhan Carew siobhan.carew@cantab.net It can also be arranged to pick you up from Littleport station.

Alexander Masters is an author, screenwriter, and worker with the homeless and lives in Cambridge.

He is the writer and illustrator of "Stuart: A Life Backwards", the biography of Stuart Shorter. It explores how a young boy, somewhat disabled from birth, became mentally unstable, criminal and violent, living homeless on the streets of Cambridge. The book won many prizes and was filmed in 2006 for the BBC and HBO.

Alex will tell us how to find the story in a life and reflect on the frequent gap between expectations and reality in our lives.

Helen will give part talk, part workshop about the "Emotional Resonance and the Short Story".

Sheis a Lecturer of Creative Writing and Publishing at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England. Her first collection of fiction Hair Side, Flesh Side won the Sydney J Bounds Award in 2013, and Gifts for the One Who Comes After, her second collection, won the World Fantasy Award and the Shirley Jackson Award in 2015. Her debut novel Everything that is Born is published by Random House Canada in 2018.

Jane Phillips completed a two year MA course at City University, London - Creative Writing, Novels (Crime), in October 2016. Was it expensive – yes she says, was it worth it – yes again. What did I learn? I'll tell you in November she promises  - with some handouts from the course.

Les Brookes attended a couple of Arvon courses and is  happy to present on them. The courses he attended were widely separated in time, 1982 and 2011, and in content – the first tutored by two poets, the founders of Arvon, and the second by two novelists, Philip Hensher and Sam North. Les will focus on what he gained from them and the qualities of a good tutor.

Hannah Hooton will tell us about the Creative writing Access course she did on Creative Writing, English Literature and Journalism, and the Bachelor's course on Writing and Film Studies, and her Master's course on Creative Writing: Scriptwriting, so she has done so has plenty of resources to talk about.

Beverley Steffert  will give an overview of Pillar Alessandra’s workshop  - this was given non-stop by an effervescent American screen writer, who in typical American super-motivation style promised to stop us procrastinating, get our story into the wide world, and add zing (whatever that is) to our dialogue. This will be contrasted with a local adult education course in Cambridge who had everyone write their idea for a story in summary and then in each class had us move the story forward using a story writing framework. These seem typically American and typically English ways of doing things!

Hemingway said "If you can throw away stuff that would make a high point of interest in somebody else’s story, you know you’re going good."

In this workshop-based evening, Tim Love will look at how to edit your texts - adding as well as throwing away - starting at the word level then working all the way up to shifting the order of chapters. He will also suggest ways to conquer the inhibitions that make it difficult for us to edit our own pieces.