Writing Prize & YouTube video goes live!

It’s official! The 2014 Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize is now open and accepting entries. For more details about the prizes, who the judges are and how to enter please click here.

Also… as I’m writing this post, two of my authors, the wonderful Angela Topping and Cathy Bryant, are getting ready for their poetry gig at 8th Day in Manchester tonight. They will be joined by the poets Rosie Garland and Sarah Miller. Due to family reasons I can’t be there unfortunately, but hopefully this video of Cathy reading her poem ‘Look At All The Women’ will be *almost* as good as being there in person! Please do have a watch and share it if you enjoy it.

‘Look At All The Women’ by Cathy Bryant

Wonderful reviews for Look At All The Women keep popping up. The reviewer in the summer issue of Mslexia thought it “wickedly funny” and Zion Lights – writer, journalist, mama – recently wrote on Twitter that she was “Blown away by Cathy Bryant’s poetry in Look At All The Women“. Stephanie Siviter, who won a copy of Cathy’s book in the Story of Mum Twitter party giveaway, commented: “Delighted to win a copy. Shed tears reading it & laughed too.” She also added that “it has inspired me to start writing poetry again. A woman definitely to aspire to.”

I don’t think you can ask much more from a poetry collection can you?!

If you’d like to get inspired by Cathy or Angela’s poetry collections why not pop on over to The Mother’s Milk Bookshop and buy yourself a book or two – they’re NOW ON SALE! Every purchase made provides the buyer with one paid entry ‘fee’ to our Writing Prize…. I hope that that is inspiration enough to GET WRITING and GET ENTERING!

Latest news and dates for your diary

Things may seem quiet around here, but actually I’m busier than usual. I’ve been putting together not one, not two, not three but FOUR contracts (and unusually this isn’t for just 4 authors but 5. Hmm… intrigued? Hopefully you will be!). More about the contracts and authors another time, when everything has been signed, sealed and delivered.

In other news I’m putting together the first ever Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize Anthology. It should, fingers-crossed, be out mid-September, and I’ve also been looking ahead to the start of the next Writing Prize (beginning 28th August, to coincide with Cathy & Angela’s upcoming poetry performance). I’ve been in discussion with the wonderful judges and putting together flyers and adverts. I’m delighted to be able to announce that Cathy Bryant is going to be the sole adjudicator of the poetry category and Milli Hill is going to be judging the prose category. Many thanks to Cathy and Milli for taking on these tasks.

So come on wonderful writers, I dare you to make their job good and challenging by sending in some fab poems and prose pieces on the theme “The Story of Us”. Intrigued…? Details will be online in another week or two.

The Mother’s Milk Books authors (and past and present judges Angela Topping and Cathy Bryant) are also extra, extra busy as they are going to be performing some of their poems from Letting Go and Look At All The Women at the 8th Day Café in Manchester on 28th August 7 – 9.30 p.m. Rosie Garland and Sarah Miller will be joining them to make it a really fab (& feminine) event.

If Manchester’s just that bit too far, why not buy Look At All The Women and see if, unlike the reviewer at WriteOutLoud, you can read it and avoid getting sunburnt! Lowdham’s The Bookcase is the latest independent bookshop to stock our growing list of books (along with The Melton Bookshop in Melton Mowbray and Five Leaves Bookshop in Nottingham) so if you’re local to Lowdham, or passing through, you can always buy a copy of one of our books there.

Lastly… the ever-enthusiastic and energetic Pippa at Story of Mum is hosting a Twitter Party Make Date on 13th August from 8.30 – 10 p.m. UK time. Party-goers will be sharing where their eyes have lingered and celebrating what they see (both the bad and the good) in their day-to-day lives. One lucky party guest will be winning themselves some neat goodies – a paperback copy of Look At All The Women being one of them.

Enjoy the rest of August, and when I come out from under my mountain (well, okay, small pile) of contracts I’ll be blogging more about the anthology and the Writing Prize. Yay!