From speaking on Radio 4’s Women’s Hour to stabbing dictionaries, 26ers are keeping busy, and look out for some courses to inspire Dark Angels Scholarship Your chance to win a free place on a Dark Angels course! Dark Angels are offering a scholarship for the Intensive Foundation course at the lovely Highgreen Manor, Northumbria, [...]
Chris Martin thinks everyone should read comics and says there is much to be learnt from them if you’re a writer. Following on from his inspiring Pecha Kucha at Wordstock, here are three ways why reading comics will make you a better writer. Pow! Zap! Kapow! Chris has been championing comics in the workplace for [...]
This time in 2011 we were deep in our Christmas storytelling project, 26 Stories of Christmas. We asked 26 writers to choose the object that means Christmas to them. Then we paired them randomly with another writer’s object, and asked each to write a 500-word story. From 1 – 26 December, we published a story [...]
Compass Murphy goes to Monaco “I’ve long wanted to see my 2001 children’s novel Compass Murphy adapted for the big screen. My script has been circulating in Hollywood, with interest but no takers so far. Now it’s just been confirmed that the screenplay has been made Official Selection in the Monaco Film Festival next month.” Stephen Potts [...]
Prize-winning sestudes, published short stories and writing endurance challenges… Just a standard month for 26ers. I was surprised and delighted to learn that I won the Foyles bookshop competition, in conjunction with 26 and the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green. Foyles asked contestants to describe their favourite book from childhood in the form of [...]
Day job: I’m a full-time writer. Private passions: They’re rather tame, I’m afraid – I like reading and knitting. What do people get wrong about you? They think I’m an exciting creature who would never sit at home reading or knitting. What do you like best about belonging to 26? There are [...]
Elise Valmorbida writes about forthcoming Russianness at the Oxfordshire haven of Stonehill House Do you remember I wrote about my Pasternak weekend in June earlier this year? Er, well, I did. Have a look back at my review here. No. Have a look forward! You too can enjoy a weekend of inspiration, delicious food [...]
Once it was Oxford’s main post office and telephone exchange. Now it’s a dilapidated building. Soon it will become the Story Museum open to the public and celebrating the joy of storytelling. …more
This month we bring you the gossip about Miranda Dickinson’s Last First Kiss, a flash slam at Albion Beatnik bookstore, and something interesting about exploding helicopters……more
Oompah. Oompah. This is where all you clever 26ers get to talk about the interesting stuff your writing. This month we bring you Rob’s town-twinny things, Helen’s PRICEY theatre, Alan’s motorcycling diaries and Paul’s Antarctic death …more
Oompah. Oompah. This is the place where all the clever people at 26 get to talk about the interesting stuff they’re doing. This month we bring you rabbit food, a Scottish exhibition and not any old nativity. …more
For the last few years, 26 member, Rishi Dastidar has been doing something a little quixotic. Nearly every time that he updates his status in Facebook, he’s also been recording those thoughts in a notebook. Now, working with designer Matt Busher, those status updates have been turned into postcards. And a thousand of them will [...]
Fiona Thompson doesn’t have a yellow pencil, but she did win an International Naturist Federation press prize for an article on British nudist camps. She’s a board member of 26 and runs her own writing consultancy business www.wordspring.co.uk. Follow her @wordspring_uk The word ‘Pimp’ gets my attention, next to a picture of a man with [...]
“Julia Buendia Allone was proud of her name, even though it made people uncomfortable. People said there was no more difficult name in the world. How do you pronounce it? I don’t mind, said Julia, it’s up to you. But people still wanted to know. They shied away from calling her ‘Alone’ although that was [...]
As we mentioned last month, 26 member Roger Horberry has new ebook out that delves into that most mysterious of subjects, the meaning of life with lessons from Shinto, Richard Dawkins, Sikhism and HRH Prince Philip to name a few. If you’ve ever wondered why we’re here and what it’s all for then now’s your [...]
26 member, Mike Reed is cycling 230-odd miles from Sheffield to Box Hill in Surrey to raise money for The Brigitte Trust, a local charity that employs trained volunteers to offer emotional and practical support for those facing life-threatening illness like cancer or motor neurone disease. Everything from a lift to the hospital to simply [...]
The 26/D&AD Archive Dive is a series of articles by 26 members celebrating the best work from the D&AD awards archives. Today, C is for Cog by Sue Evans What to choose? Should I stir things up, court controversy? A lot of interesting work, agencies and clients begin with the letter C in the D&AD [...]
To have swallowed a Crocodile Would make anybody smile But to swallow a Caramel Wafer Is safer. 25 years ago, then Poet Laureate Ted Hughes was tucking into a Tunnocks bar when he decided to open the wrapper and write a poem on it. The poem, now on display in the University of St Andrews, [...]
Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain by Barbara Strauch, Penguin, £9.99 This book is for everyone who walks downstairs, then has to go back upstairs to remind themselves why they went downstairs in the first place. It reassuringly describes new research into neuroscience, explaining that absent-mindedness of middle age develops at the same time as [...]
Dark Angels, the Creative Writing in Business courses run by 26′s own John Simmons, Stuart Delves and Jamie Jauncey, will be the subject of BBC Radio 4′s In Business Programme on Thursday 12 May at 8.30pm (repeated 9.30pm, Sunday 15 May). The programme was recorded during the recent Dark Angels masterclass at Merton College, Oxford. [...]
