May 2015 Goals

Hello!

A little later than anticipated but here is my round up of my April goals and how I did! Also, goal setting for May too!

April Outcomes:

Once Upon a Time Sampler – No progress on this one sadly! I didn’t manage to get those last two frames in because I was spending all of my time working on my Barcelona Sunset as that is my priority right now. I am staying with my parents this weekend though so I am packing my sampler with me since I obviously can’t work on my Mum’s present! I have saved this month’s design to stitch while I am here but if I get that done before the end of the weekend I might have time to add a frame too.

Barcelona Sunset – I am so close to finishing this quarter right now! i just have a block of grey across the bottom that no matter how much I stitch it just doesn’t seem to get any smaller! However, I should be on track to finish this quarter by the end of next week at the very latest (since I am losing this weekend!) so then I’ll be ready to tackle the final one.

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My Article on the Booker Website!

Well, I said I’d share the link when I have it! Here is the link to my article about Julian Barnes on the Man Booker Prize website!

http://www.themanbookerprize.com/feature/man-booker-universities-initiative-julian-barnes-visits-university-hull

And don’t forget, you still have time to enter my literary themed giveaway!

A Literary Inspired Week and a Prize-Winning Giveaway (now closed)

Last week was one of the most amazing and most surreal weeks of my life. It was down to acting as treasurer for the Hull University English Society. As it is National Novel Writing Month, we have been organising lots of events to get students inspired to write, but not just novels, they can write short stories or poetry if they wish…we just want to get students writing! As well as writing workshops, part of the programme that we have mapped out for the month are ‘inspirational events’ to inspire people to pick up the pen. These events are talks led by established authors, including local Hull author Russ Litten, who kicked off our launch night!

Our brave participants looking eager on launch night!

Russ is thoroughly involved in our plans, and has offered to help judge to outcomes of the month of creativity, to pick a winner to be published in the student newspaper! He is going to announce the winner at an open mic night we are holding in December, where students can share the work that they have written throughout the month.

This week though, we had less of a focus on running writing workshops and had a bigger focus on inspiring the writing, as the motivation drops throughout the month. I kicked off the week, remarkably, by having afternoon tea with 2011 Man Booker winner Julian Barnes. This surreal meeting took place in the Royal Station Hotel in Hull, where he met with the University’s postgraduate creative writing students. There was a discussion about Barnes’ writing style and how he approaches the creative writing process. On the evening, he gave a lecture about his Booker winning novel The Sense of an Ending in the 500+ capacity Middleton Hall at the University. The lecture was an opportunity for the audience to ask him questions about the novel. I was honoured to be asked to write an article about the event for the Booker Prize Foundation’s blog…I’ll post the link as soon as I have it!