Character Driven: Writing Plausible People with Annie Garthwaite, Alix Nathan and Kate Innes
Sunday, 28th November 2021, 10:30 - 12:30
About this event
Shrewsbury Library, Castle Gates, SY1 2AS Tickets: Full £10 U18 £6
This event brings together three authors who have a wealth of experience between them. During this session each will talk about their latest work from the perspective of the people that make their novels possible...the characters that carry the story.
ALIX NATHAN
Alix Nathan was born in London and educated there and at York University where she read English and Music. She has lived in Norwich, Munich, Philadelphia, Birkenhead and now in the Welsh Marches where, with her husband, she owns some ancient woodland. She has published three children’s books and written about Christina Rossetti and the 18th century writer and notorious beauty Mary Robinson. Since 2006 she has been writing adult fiction, both contemporary and historical.
"The last Eve saw of her mother was a wave from the basket of a rising balloon. A wilful, lonely orphan in the house of her erratic artist guardian, Eve struggles to retain the image of her missing mother and the father she never knew. In a London beset by pageantry, incipient riot and the fear of Napoleonic invasion, Eve must grow into a young woman with no one to guide her through its perils."
ANNIE GARTHWAITE
Annie Garthwaite grew up in a working class community in the north-east of England. A schoolgirl interest in medieval history became a lifelong obsession with Cecily Neville, so, at age fifty-five, she enrolled on the Warwick Writing MA programme. Her extraordinary debut novel Cecily is the result. During a thirty-year international business career she frequently found herself the only woman at the table, where she gained valuable insights into how a woman like Cecily might have operated. Today she lives with her partner – and far too many animals – on the side of a green Shropshire hill close to the Yorkist stronghold of Ludlow.
"Wife. Mother. Politician. Traitor. Fighter. Survivor. 'Rebellion?' The word is a spark. They can start a fire with it, or smother it in their fingertips. She chooses to start a fire. You are born high, but marry a traitor's son. You bear him twelve children, carry his cause and bury his past. You play the game, against enemies who wish you ashes. Slowly, you rise. You are Cecily. But when the king who governs you proves unfit, what then? Loyalty or treason - death may follow both. The board is set. Time to make your first move. Told through the eyes of its greatest unknown protagonist, this astonishing debut plunges you into the closed bedchambers and bloody battlefields of the first days of the Wars of the Roses, a war as women fight it."
KATE INNES
Kate Innes was born in London and raised in America, returning to the UK in the 1980’s to study Archaeology. She taught in Africa before completing an MA and working as a Museum Education Officer around the West Midlands. She and her family now live at the foot of Wenlock Edge, where the surrounding historical landscape inspires much of her writing. Her first novel, The Errant Hours, was a Historical Novel Society Editor’s Choice. Her first children’s book is a WW2 historical fantasy, Greencoats, set in Birmingham and Shropshire. Kate’s poetry collection, Flocks of Words, was shortlisted for The Rubery Book Award. She enjoys running creative writing courses and collaborating with other artists.
The final book in the 'Arrowsmith Trilogy', that began with The Errant Hours, Wild Labyrinth is inspired by the Mappa Mundi in Hereford Cathedral, the medieval obsession with Greek myths, the destruction of the Knights Templar and many other strange historical events in the early 14th century.
The third, and final, of the Arrowsmith Trilogy, Wild Labyrinth, will be out at Festival time. It won't be long until you can read the conclusion of the story that started with The Errant Hours and continued in All the Winding World.
Kate Innes Writer | Fiction, Poetry, Performance and Workshops