So, how is your November going so far? Have you been endlessly raking and bagging fallen leaves, trying to figure out what type of lockdown or tier you’re in, or been unable to pull yourself away from the rolling US election news? It’s been all three of these for us! We’d only just wrapped our heads around the clocks going back but now we really need to think about the Christmas shopping. It’s not even halfway through November, and we’re already exhausted! That said, we
have found time to put together some winter warmers for you in the form of some reading nuggets to chew over while you clutch a cup of something warm, so coorie in with us☕ …
Guest Blog 🍂
We hope you were following our news last month when we welcomed our first guest blogger to the
Autumn Voices website in the form of poet, Jo Somerset. This month our guest blogger is our very own Autumn Voice, Kriss Nichol. Kriss has recently published her latest book –
Ancient Anchors – and launched it online last Saturday in a most enjoyable and well-put-together event on YouTube, which you can watch
here. Kriss is blogging for us this month about the process of writing and publishing the book, and what her themes and inspirations are. The
blogs will appear weekly each Wednesday until the end of November and we hope you can support Kriss by reading her blogs on the website, watching her launch video or buying a copy of her new book.
Poetry Competition 🍁
If you follow us on
Twitter or
Facebook, you may have seen that our October poetry competition received 53 entries, which we were thrilled with. Entries came from all over the UK, and a few from Spain and Finland too, which is quite exciting. Our entrants also ranged in age from 61 to 89, which is exactly what we like to see at Autumn Voices HQ! Our competition judge
Finola Scott is currently whittling down the entries to select her favourites and then choose a final winning, runner-up and two Highly Commended poems which we will announce in due course. We hope to do this by the end of November, and then see if it’s possible to assemble a very small event to celebrate the winning poems. Keep an eye on us online for more news about that.
NaNoWriMo 🍂
It’s
National Novel Writing Month! We’re putting out all sorts of provocations on social media this month in response to the annual creative writing project that takes place globally every November. You will find us punctuating our social media accounts with mentions of our own
writing projects, links to workshops and events, references to writing as a creative ageing pursuit and general encouragement to get those creative juices flowing, just in case there’s a novel in you that needs to come out. We LOVE novels and creative writing at Autumn Voices, so we hope you’re inspired to get involved and finish that project, or perhaps start the book you’ve been meaning to write for years ...
Special mentions to notable Autumn Voices 🍁
It’s come to our attention that there are two very significant honorary Autumn Voices’ birthdays this month.
The marvellous Margaret Atwood turns 81 on November 18
th, and it’s fair to say she is a notable example of creative ageing, having won the Booker Prize (jointly with Bernadine Evaristo) for the second time just last year. She is, in a lesser-known way, also a wonderful poet, and she talks about her poetry and reflects on the passage of time and how to create art in her brilliant and very recent
essay in
The Guardian.
Richard Holloway – distinguished writer, broadcaster and cleric – turns 87 on November 26
th. Richard has continued writing throughout his life and became an official Autumn Voice as an interview subject for the
book Robin Lloyd-Jones edited two years ago. As the pandemic rumbles on and winter starts to wrap itself around us, we think Richard’s latest book, reviewed
here in
The Scotsman, is very prescient.
Survey 🍂
We’d just like to say a huge thanks to any of you who completed our survey. We received 16 responses to it, which may not sound like a lot, but we got some very useful and detailed answers that helped clarify things we weren’t sure of, confirm what we suspected and guided us onwards as we near completion of the new version of the website. We may do this again next year, once that has launched, but for now we are grateful to people who spared the time to help us on our way.
Thanks for joining us this week. Until next time, stay safe, stay well and stay in touch.
