Authors North Spring Meeting

I must stop taking these blog holidays and resume my self-appointed job of cluttering up the internet.

I'm fired up now with all things to do with writing and publishing, after going to the Authors North SOA Spring Meeting at Hull yesterday. I met some lovely people there and we had lots of interesting discussion.

The meeting was held at the Hull History Centre. In the morning we had a fascinating talk by Judy Burg, an archivist who then split us into two groups to take us on a tour around the archives. The papers stored there are so well looked after with sensitive sensors to keep the temperature exactly to their liking. The rows upon rows of shelves stacked with boxes, and the whole atmosphere of the place, makes you feel as if you're inside a film set. It all seemed surreal. Among the thousands of archived material, they have original documents of Sylvia Plath. Also of much interest to me were the poems of Stevie Smith written when her work was still in progress, along with her quirky illustrations. Spread out on a table for us to see and touch were, among a wealth of other interesting material, the notebooks of Philip Larkin.

After lunch it was the Society of Authors Roadshaw. Ebooks, Kindle, Amazon, the Google Settlement, tax issues, copyright and the current state of publishing were discussed in a lively questions and answers session. All too soon we were finishing our coffee and polishing off the last remnants of the delicious banana & carrot cake and it was time to go.

The SOA staff and the members who attended were warm and friendly, great sense of humour and all so passionate about writing. I hope to keep in touch via the internet until it's time to meet again at the next meeting in Autumn.