Happy February!
We made it through January – surely the longest of all the thirty-one-day months – and find ourselves still in very chilly territory. It’s blowing a hoolie here at Autumn Voices Towers, but we are staying warm, thankfully, by heeding all the lockdown guidance to stay indoors as much as possible. We are taking that very literally, as we’re sure you are too, but we understand if you’re feeling like this is all a little bit Groundhog Day…
On that note, our favourite groundhog – Punxsutawney Phil of Gobbler’s Knob, Pennsylvania – has predicted another six weeks of bitter winter, followed by one of the brightest and most beautiful springs we’ve surely ever seen. I think we all need that metaphorically as much as literally, so let’s hope Phil’s on the money and we can all cast off our shadows and emerge like spring blooms in a few weeks’ time.
To help you out of hibernation, we have some brand-new Autumn Voices snacks for you to feast on.
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#CLANGERS and Guest Blogs 🍂
Our new
#CLANGERS project started last month, which as you’ll hopefully now know is a challenge to good daily habits for healthy creative living underpinned by eight specific themes which are the brainchild of
Dr Phil Hammond. Phil’s advice for a happy, healthy life is to do your daily CLANGERS, which are:
Connect, Learn, (be) Active, Notice, Give back, Eat well, Relax and Sleep.
Autumn Voices will focus on a different CLANGER each month through online content such as guest blogs, creative writing competitions, social media prompts and flash non-fiction. Our February theme is
#learn and we’re joined this month by Larry Butler from
Playspace Publications and
Lapidus Scotland.
Larry’s
guest blog this month give us an introduction to taiji and qikong, accompanied by instructional videos and a request to take up a 28-day taiji challenge. Join him!
We’ll also be bringing you a special one-off blog piece from
Jo Somerset to help us mark
LGBT+ History Month, so look out for that on our website later this month.
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Quick & Quirky Questions 🍁
Quick & Quirky Questions is a
brand-new monthly feature on the Autumn Voices website for 2021 and beyond. Each month, we’ll ask a member of the Autumn Voices community – and maybe one or two well-known names and faces – some (you guessed it) quick and quirky questions! There will be five regular questions that we’ll ask each interviewee and depending on what themes we’re championing at Autumn Voices or activities we’re involved in; we might throw in one or two extra questions.
To keep track of who our interview subjects are each month, follow us on
Twitter or
Facebook and look out for the hashtag #QQQ. To whet your appetites, our first interview subject for January is
Alex Hill.
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Autumn Voices Book Promotion 🍂
As you would have seen before Christmas, we ran a promotion for the
Autumn Voices book where we made it available at the special discounted price of £10 plus postage and packaging. We’ve decided that we’re going to keep the price promotion in place indefinitely! As always, all proceeds go to Age Scotland and we’d love to send them some donations to help towards all the work they’re doing to support older people throughout this crisis and beyond so we’re grateful to anyone who helps us support them or supports us through
donations to Autumn Voices itself.
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Short Story Competition 🍁
We’re creeping towards Spring, so it’s time for another creative writing competition, don’t you think? We’ll be running a short story competition throughout May, with two themes to inspire your entry submissions: a seasonal Spring short story, or a short story on the #CLANGERS theme ‘Give Back’, which we’ll be focusing on in May. We’re in the process of finalising a judge and will post all the competition entry details online and across our social media channels in due course, but we wanted to give some advance warning so that you can get your pencils/pens/keyboards at the ready and start writing!
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Other prizes 🍂
King Lear Prizes’ national creative arts competition for older people is running again and we heartily encourage you to have a go! This is for the over 65s and covers categories such as art, poetry and music. Have a look on their
website to find out more and how you can take part.
Grey Hen Press are running the Grey Hen Poetry Prize for women aged over 60 and are accepting entries until the end of April 2021. Find out about the entry rules, judges and prize details
here.
Prole Books Literary Print Journal is running its annual Prole Laureate Poetry Competition, open to anyone to join with entries being accepted until the end of April 2021. Find out more
here.
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Jobs 🍁
Finally, we wanted to let you know that Autumn Voices is hiring. Gillian Hamnett is leaving her roles to pursue bookish projects and we are recruiting to replace her – although she promises to lurk on the sidelines for a while 😊 If you or anyone you know is interested in working with Autumn Voices, we’re hiring a Competitions Administrator, a Social Media & Marketing Coordinator and a Fundraising & Development Coordinator. We so far have fewer applications for the Fundraising role, so we particularly welcome applications for that. We also encourage people to apply for one or all of the jobs as they see fit, as well as encouraging anyone over 60 to apply. The deadline is February 14
th and all the details can be found
here.
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Thanks for joining us this month. Until next time, stay safe, stay well and stay in touch.
