BOOK, PRINT, ART, VOICE - WORDS AND WOMEN'S LATEST BOOK LAUNCH

We had a fabulous week of happenings related to Words and Women's launch of their fourth anthology.  Words And Women: Four.

Words And Women: Four is the latest showcase collection of short prose by women writers nationally over the age of 40 and at any age in the East of England. The memoir, fiction, and creative non-fiction inside reflects the brilliance, boldness and depth of women’s contemporary writing.

 This year’s anthology is an eclectic collection of high quality prose, a many-layered read of subtlety, passion, and depth. There are startling, compelling and moving texts, an insight into the dark and crippling relationships between husbands and wives, the love between a father and daughter.  Nocturnal visitors bivouac on the edge of vision, the lost follow a winter’s map, there is a rapid intellectual joy ride with a Komodo dragon. There are memories of haunted trees, the struggle for recognition and change, living with the threat of sectarian violence and so much more. This book reflects the way we live, hope and love now.

This is a book for the reader who wants to peel back the layers and wander through rich and complex worlds featuring winning entries from our annual new writing competition. This year’s guest judge Naomi Wood, author of ‘The Godless Boys’ has selected a range of texts that show us what it is to be alive in a time of change. 

Order from Amazon, Waterstones, Unthank Books or from the following link: https://wordery.com/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Below is a blog posted on the Writer's Centre comment pages outlining what we got up to from March 7th to 11th...

Red umbrellas, loose text, logos, and a pint of pvc, white boxes, missing bios, wandering programmes, tight deadline for book orders, more text pressed onto vinyl, plastic or glass? Fruit Juice, Wine, Beer, Water? Too groovy Fem(ale)? Timelines, schedules, endless emails, train times, risk assessments, social media, insurance, art, picture frames, flyers in hand, posters on watering hole walls and literary haunts, a countdown of tasks. The peculiarly knotty problem of creating stencils when hours are shaved off night and day.  Lists extend.  It is that month, then that week and then the day.

It is our latest Words and Women celebration of International Women’s Day and the launch of our fourth anthology, Words and Women: Four.  This time it is a week of happening.  We like to vary what we do.  Last year we marked our fifth anniversary with a sell-out night at Norwich Arts Centre with readings from winners of our annual competition featured in our anthology published by Unthank Books. Louisa Theobald, a brilliantly funny and observant compere, introduced not only last year’s winning writers but music so powerful from Sink Ya Teeth, Emily Winng and Sargasso Trio followed by the incomparable Karen Reilly and the Neutrinos that we knew this year had to be entirely different.  Last year was a rich anniversary, it felt golden, honestly, and it was BIG.  This year had to be completely different.  We turned on our pinhead and came up with City of Women, a week of Book, Print, Art and Voice.

'Going High'

It is also a year of many collaborations.  This is what we can sometimes do through Words and Women - draw in other creatives to help celebrate and launch a book – and it feels so good.  We habitually try to claim a bit more public space for women and in commissioning new work where we can.  This year, we approached Print to the People, the Norwich-based print collective to create original artwork in response to the national and regional prize winning stories. Deborah Arnander’s complex short story The Wife, winner of our new national prize for women over 40, and Melissa Fu’s elegiac non-fiction piece Suite for My Father, which won our regional award. Nunns Yard Gallery on St. Augustine’s Street is now under occupation for a week.  The work is up. Images inspired by story…even the exhibition title These Stories are like Paths has been hooked neatly out of Deborah’s fictional telling, and neatly leads us from the gallery to 13A, a small shop front additional exhibition space just down the road. In here, local artist Clare Jarrett, is creating an installation over seven days, inspired by all those words spilling out from the pages of our anthology.

Artist Jo Stafford

We still needed to mark International Women’s Day.  And since our audience was spread over a week and our launch event with Naomi Wood, this year’s guest judge, was ticketed, although free, with a limit on entry, we needed something spectacular for the day itself. Not only that but something uplifting in these politically and socially darkening days.  That’s where the umbrellas come in.

We decided to busk inspirational words written by women around the city centre.  Triggered by Michelle Obama’s exhortation – ‘when they go low, we go high’ - this part of a week of happening had its own title too… ‘Going High.’ Enter our next collaboration, this time with Chalk Circle Theatre Company and my insomniac wrestling with stencils and black paint. 

Installation by Clare Jarrett

We found a range of women, happy to read on the street, all the texts, personally selected, personally meaningful. For strong visual impact and the staging of an arresting and moving spectacle, we called on Adina Levay, artistic director of Chalk Circle Theatre Company.

Next came the red umbrellas, women dressed in black, and a schedule of appearances.  We could reach out. It plays on protest. It is protest to put good strong words onto the street.

National prize winner Deborah Arnander, two guest judges, Naomi Wood and Emma Healey and former runner up Rowan Whiteside.

Anna Metcalfe reading

We have the city that does different to thank for its support and we collected for ECPAT UK, a charity campaigning against child-trafficking and transnational child exploitation, and raised £162 in a few hours.

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Words and Women is a voluntary organisation set up and run by Belona Greenwood and Lynne Bryan.  It is a showcase for women writers who live in the East of England, or nationally over 40, at all stages of their professional careers in an annual celebration of regional creativity on International Women’s Day, and through commissioning opportunities and an annual new writing prize.
http://wordsandwomennorwich.blogspot.co.uk/

Words and Women has twice been shortlisted for the national Saboteur Awards and, this year for the second time, Words and Women were runners up in the Women in Publishing award for ‘pioneering venture.’

Belona Greenwood