Marlborough Town Hall Celebrates Wiltshire literary talent, 23 September 2011

On Friday afternooon four Wiltshire writers came together in the  Assembly Room before an audience of over sixty people to talk about their work.

Marlborough's Second Annual Literary Festival opened on Thursday evening with Lemn Sissay. The following afternoon Ellen Prockter introduced four local writers to an assembled audience of over sixty people. 

Liu Hong, who teaches Mandarin part-time at Marlborough College lives in Ogbourne (a village four miles from Marlborough), had appeared at the Beijing Literature Festival earlier this year.  She said that she was "privileged to be a Wiltshire Writer" and that Wiltshire was "a very special place and the Downs a very spiritual place for me." Born in the late 1960s during the cultural revolution in China she was protected by her elders and parents from the traumas their generation lived through. She bravely explained how she had even enjoyed participating in creating posters criticizing her teachers. On the cover of her book Startling Moon was printed a poem in Chinese "You don't know the true face of Mount Kailash until you are on it." 

She started learning English when her "classmates missed school". A "friend of her Dad's", a distinguished Auto Engineer who was punished for being an intellectual by being required to sweep a factory floor, taught her English. They had a "fun time" together learning stories and songs. Earlier in his life he had travelled to America and brought back a Snow White picture book which he gave to Liu Hong. She said, "I loved it" because at the time "Chinese books were made of thin brown paper...ugly". These English books had proper colour, "the red was really red" and English was sensual, luxurious. Her teacher was obviously well educated and intelligent as well. "Why did I write in English? I majored in English in University, I read Wuthering Heights and the Bronte Sisters." It was the 1980s and "China had opened up - when the last foreign teachers left, they left their books," an eclectic collection including both great literature and popular novels which she read. In her early twenties she was offered the chance to go to the Mongolian grassland's and Chinese Inner Mongolia "your mind and heart opened exposed to openness."  By this time Liu Hong was already writing in English and after moving to Wiltshire she started creative writing about the memories of her childhood in China. She sent the work to Toby Eady (who had published another Chinese author) whom she had found in the Writer's Handbook. Two weeks later, when she was on holiday in Cornwall, he phoned her and "I was offered a four book deal."  In closing, she read for three minutes from her last book "Wives of the East Wind". "It is about my parents generation, idealism betrayed by Communism."

James Aitcheson ,from Mildenhall,  at twenty-five, the youngest published author present,  spoke next, saying that he set his first novel during the Norman Conquest, a very turbulent time. His story is about a hero's quest for revenge, and being caught up in a conspiracy. He studied this period in History at Cambridge and his dissertation was on King Harrold.  About a month after his studies ended, about five years ago, he worked out the plot, which was the kernel of the idea for Sworn Sword. The Norman Conquest lasted several years,"it was a long drawn out process to pacify the country of English rebellions". The story is told from the Norman perspective, "usually they are seen as the enemy." "The Normans really were bad dudes, they came to England for very self-serving reasons...and they came to England with the support of the Pope behind them" they "saw it as a crusade, they were very much in the right." The tale is "set around Durham and York and also the Abbey at Wilton. The Abbey no longer exists." Through Wilton, Tancred, the hero is brought back home to Wiltshire.

Mike Williams, explained that he is a relative newcomer to Wiltshire, as he has only been resident for seven years. He has written both fiction and non-fiction, and for over thirty-five years, he published in psychology and moral philosophy. He worked identifying the "potential of leadership and leveraging talent, getting the best out of the best." His WW2 trilogy is about a flotilla operatingout of the Isles of Scilly. He only took up creative writing in this seventies. His wife is a children's author specialising in Poetry and Children's stories. His fiction is very different from his earlier career, dealing with "fear, anxiety,concern, terror. His first book of fiction was published three years ago at seventy-five years old "better late than never."

Sorrel Pitts, who spoke last, worked as a commissioning editor for Macmillan and now works for O.U.P. as an Editor of Children's fiction. She apologised for not being used to public speaking and quoted John Foulds "writing is the creation of an alternative world." Writing fills a void, creating an alternative life. She spent her childhood in Lockeridge, three miles from Marlborough,and from there went to University to study English. Even though she worked in publishing it was not easy to find a publisher, her novel was submitted to eight publishers before it was accepted by Indigo Dreams. This was a salutary warning for all the aspiring novelists present, even those who work within the publishing industry, can find it hard to find a publisher to publish their own novels.

There was time for a  brief period of questions from the audience followed by a book signing in the Literary Cafe in the Town Hall. The Wiltshire Writers session was an exceptionally successful start to the day's events.