Literature Festival 2006

The Literature Festival was a great success, with most events well attended, including the two drama productions at Vera Fletcher Hall, Thames Ditton, on consecutive nights, which had been considered a risk. There has been great enthusiasm from both contributors and audience members to make this an annual event. There was certainly a demand from the participants in both the Creative Writing and the Performance Poetry Workshops to run these groups on a more regular basis. It was particularly satisfying that we were able to stage events at venues in most parts of the borough, including two centres for the retired (Claygate and Walton); King George's Hall, Esher; the Barn Theatre at Molesey; riverhouse, Walton; and all the Elmbridge libraries, which, in addition to the opening lecture at Esher, this year held special storytimes for pre-school children. Among the highlights of the month were the talks by three authors from very different genres - Meg Gardiner (crime), Helena Drysdale (travel) and Adrienne Dines (fiction) - who were all very entertaining speakers; "Diary of a Nobody" with Rodney Bewes; the vintage Storybus, carrying storyteller Kevin Graal around the borough; and the public readings of the competition winners, which were wonderful evenings and much appreciated by the entrants. The Literary Competition, "On My Way" attracted 166 entries, double the number of 2005, and mostly of a high standard. Six schools (Chandlers Field, Claremont Fan Court, Cleves, St Albans, Thames Ditton Infants and Thames Ditton Juniors) took part as a class creative writing project, which produced some really excellent submissions. We tried to reward and read out as many of these as we could, to encourage the children. All the winning, runner-up and commended stories and poems were made available to read on our website and we produced CDs of the two Performance Evenings. In addition, the winning authors in the adult categories were interviewed on Radio Jackie about their lives and their writing. If you would like to read the winning entries - plus those entries which were chosen for public reading or 'highly commended' - then click here