50 is the magic number

The Writers' Guild of Great Britain is celebrating its 50th anniversary on Wednesday 13th May 2009 and, to commemorate this momentous occasion, we are offering 50 people the chance to join the Guild on its 50th anniversary for just £50.

This offer applies to Full members, who currently pay a minimum of £150 per annum, and Candidate members who pay £100. The offer applies to a new member's first year of membership only.

To be one of the lucky 50, call the Guild's Membership Team on 13th May 2009, between 9.30am and 5.30pm, on 01952 214 063 and quote 'WGGB Anniversary Offer'. You can pay your £50 over the telephone by credit or debit card and your welcome pack will be sent on within a few days.

Alternatively, members of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain Facebook Group can take advantage of the special offer by sending a Facebook message with their name and contact details to fellow group member Naomi MacDonald AND changing their status on 13th May to "Happy 50th Birthday to the Writers' Guild of Great Britain"

Please note that this special offer is only available on 13th May 2009.

We look forward to welcoming our 50 new members. What better way to celebrate our half-century?!

Vamps, Vixens and Feminists - The Elephant In The Room

Sphinx is convening a professional forum on the issues around women's employment and representation in theatre, film and TV. The Writers’ Guild, with Equity and the Directors Guild of Great Britain, Women in Film and TV, and the Arts Council are collaborating in presenting this forum which will take place at the National Theatre in the Olivier Theatre on 16th June 2009 from 10am to 1.30pm. Tickets are free but places are limited.

The recent Gender Equality Duty has mandated all public institutions to give due regard to proactive promotion of gender equality within their organisations. More importantly, a significant aspect of the Gender Equality Duty is the responsibility of public bodies to actively promote equality between men and women.

Speakers include:

Kate Buffery, Katherine Rake, Beatrix Campbell, Tanika Gupta, Tracy Brabin and David Edgar.

To book a place please email info@sphinxtheatre.co.uk with the subject line “Vamps, Vixens and Feminists” including your name, contact details and the professional body to which you belong (if applicable) in order to receive an e-invitation; alternatively you can call 020 7401 9994.

Please make sure you reserve your place by Friday 5th June if you would like to attend.

Comedy and politics

On The Huffington Post, Writers Guild of America East (WGAE) members and academics consider the relationship between comedy and politics. From Sabiyha Prince:

We should not be surprised to know that, in the search for real information about U.S. politics and similar goings-on around the world, many Americans turn to "Saturday Night Live" and the, back-to-back, fake news and punditry programming offered by "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report." As politicians and the mainstream media who cover them, too often, appear out of step with the concerns of most Americans, these shows fill an aching void. For those of us who have spent the last eight years alarmed by unwarranted war, torture, fired prosecutors, illegal wiretapping, botched hurricane relief, no-bid contracts, missing billions, and other outgrowths of corporate corruption and governmental malfeasance, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Loren Michaels and their crew of writers and performers are among an invaluable cohort of entertainers who remind the reality-based community that we are not alone.

WGAE is holding an event on the subject in Washington tonight.

JJ Abrams interview

In The Guardian, Steve Rose talks to writer-director-producer JJ Abrams about Lost and the new Star Trek film (written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman based on the TV series by Gene Roddenberry).

Like Spielberg, Abrams has been immersed in film-making for so long, he seems to have mastered every aspect of it. He appears to have an innate feel for entertainment that is cult yet mass-market, accessible but not dumb, polished and high-tech yet character-driven, zeitgeisty but infused with good old-fashioned storytelling. Abrams hasn't revolutionised film-making, though he may be perfecting it. What he has revolutionised, though, is the art of 21st-century entertainment. The movies and TV shows are just one feature in a landscape of viral marketing campaigns, merchandising tie-ins, spoiler alerts, online chat forums, fan blogs, websites that treat fictional worlds as real places, and so on. "People want to find magic," he says. "It's almost like a Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe thing. You want to find that secret. You want there to be some kind of portal between reality and fiction."

Alison Hume: writing Summerhill

On the Writers' Guild website, Children's BAFTA winner Alison Hume explains how she came to write a TV drama about Summerhill school.

Dramatising the story of how a tiny progressive school took on David Blunkett’s disapproving education department in 1999 had been a separately but equally long held dream for both CBBC’s Jon East and Tiger Aspect’s Greg Bremnan. In 2006 the planets came into alignment and Summerhill was commissioned as a 4 x 30 minute drama for CBBC. I was presented with a court transcript as thick as a brick and quickly felt the dead-ish hand of responsibility settling on my shoulder.

I put the research aside, packed my swimming costume and caught the train down to the Suffolk coast from my home in York. Most of a day later I arrived at Summerhill School. The very first thing I saw were kids playing up in the trees. Up in the trees! I felt challenged and I wasn’t even through the front door.

Alison Hume (right) with Chae Eun Park, a Summerhillian who had a part in the drama

Edge Hill Prize for the Short Story

The short list has been announced for what might be Britain's only prize for short story collections, the Edge Hill Prize for the Short Story. On the shortlist are:

• Chris Beckett, The Turing Test (Elastic Press)
• Gerard Donovan, Country of the Grand (Faber)
• Anne Enright, Yesterday’s Weather (Random House)
• Shena Mackay, The Atmospheric Railway (Random House)
• Ali Smith, The First Person and Other Stories (Hamish Hamilton)
  

Some people have expressed surprise that Chris Beckett, a science fiction writer, should be in contention alongside 'literary heavyweights.' His publisher, Elastic Press, is certainly a lot smaller than those of the other contenders.

Beckett, who said he'd tried writing stories without the science fiction element, but found himself thinking "oh, just put a robot in it", was also pleased to be "recognised outside the field" of science fiction. "It's nice company to be in," he said. "I never understand people saying that short story collections don't sell. It's odd, because we're always being told what a short attention span everyone has nowadays, so you would have thought that short stories would be popular. [They're] different to a novel in that they're much more concentrated. It would be much more work to write an 80,000 word short story collection than an 80,000 word novel ... That's the beauty of the short story – it can be very rich, densely packed."

Susannah Grant on adapting The Soloist

For the Writers Guild of America West's Angle On video series, Susannah Grant talks about adapting Steve Lopez's book The Soloist.



The Soloist was released in America last month and will be released in the UK in September.

AL Kennedy on inspiration

On The Guardian books blog AL Kennedy says that writers can find inspiration in everyday tasks. Sometimes.

Tomorrow I'll attempt to find something majestical and of use in washing and ironing a travel-week's worth of clothes. Yeah, well, if I could actually do that I'd be a majestical and useful author. Things being as they are, at least I'll get the laundry done, ready for the next trip – Ullapool beckons. Onwards.

Marilyn French 1929-2009

Marilyn French, author of The Women's Room, has died at the age of 79. There are obituaries in The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph and by AG Sulzberger and Herbert Mitgang in The New York Times.

Her first and best-known novel, “The Women’s Room,” released in 1977, traces a submissive housewife’s journey of self-discovery following her divorce in the 1950s, describing the lives of Mira Ward and her friends in graduate school at Harvard as they grow into independent women. The book was partly informed by her own experience of leaving an unhappy marriage and helping her daughter deal with the aftermath of being raped. Women all over the world seized on the book, which sold more than 20 million copies and was translated into 20 languages.

Gloria Steinem, a close friend, compared the impact of the book on the discussion surrounding women’s rights to the one that Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” had had on racial equality 25 years earlier.

Ending Lost

In The New York Times, David Itzkoff talks to Damon Lindelof, an executive producer and co-creator of Lost, about how the writers are approaching ending the long-running show.

There was always an option in past seasons which was, “Let’s hold it for next year. I don’t think they’re ready for that,” or “That’ll have more emotional impact later.” And then there are also actor deals to contend with – what’s the stable of regulars you can maintain at any one time? Next year, I feel like for the first time we’ll have the entire box of crayons to color with, without having to worry about the mechanics. All our ducks are in a row.

Tom McGrath 1940-2009

The playwright Tom McGrath has died at the age of 68. There's an obituary in The Herald:

McGrath was a free-thinker who set the tone for the proliferation of alternative thought among an underground arts culture in Scotland that would not exist without him. Influenced both by American Beat literature and the Glasgow music hall he saw as a child, McGrath melded these sensibilities in a body of work where laughs and the quest for enlightenment went hand in hand.

The Herald also has a selection of tributes.

The end of an era for professional writing?

In The Guardian, Ian Jack argues that, thanks to new technology, we are set to return to an age where professional writers become increasingly rare.

At British and American universities, this future has to be kept as a woeful secret. A great paradox of the age is that while newspapers continue their inexorable decline and publishing cuts its costs, journalism and creative writing degrees have never been more popular. Year on year, journalist applicants stood a quarter higher at 13,229 for courses beginning this autumn. Creative writing can now be learned at nearly every British institute of higher learning. Figures are hard to come by, but Britain is probably turning out about 1,300 "creative writers" every year.

Why do young people apply? Because they think they can be the next Zadie Smith. Why do universities encourage them? Because money can be made from fees. Is this responsible behaviour? We need to weigh the smashed hopes of creative writers against the financial needs of their tutors, who are themselves writers, and earning the kind of money that writing would never supply. A closed little dance: tutors teach students who in turn teach other students, like silversmiths in a medieval guild where a bangle is rarely bought though many are crafted, and everyone lives in a previous world.

What Guild members are getting up to

CAREY ANDREWS wrote the episode of EastEnders going out on BBC1 at 8:00pm on Friday 8th May.

SEBASTIAN BACSZKIEWICZ wrote the episode of Holby City "Smoke and Mirrors" going out on BBC1 at 8:00pm on Tuesday 5th May.

TONY BLACK wrote the episode of Doctors "Hang onto Nurse" going out on BBC1 at 1:45pm on Thursday 7th May.

HELEN BLAKEMAN wrote the episode of Hollyoaks going out on C4 at 6:30pm on Friday 8th May.

ROY CLARKE wrote the episode of Last of the Summer Wine "Will Howard Cross the Atlantic Single-Handed?" going out on BBC1 at 6:30pm on Sunday 3rd May.

PAUL COATES wrote the episode of Hollyoaks going out on C4 at 6:30pm on Wednesday 6th May.

ANGELA CORNER wrote the episode of Hollyoaks going out on C4 at 6:30pm on Monday 4th
May.

DAVID CROFT and JIMMY PERRY co-wrote the episode of Dad's Army "The Deadly Attachment" going out on BBC2 at 6:30pm on Saturday 2nd May.

SIMON CROWTHER wrote the episode of Coronation Street going out on ITV1 at 8:30pm on Monday 4th May.

PAUL FARRELL wrote the episode of Primeval going out on ITV1 at 7:20pm on Saturday 2nd May.

CHRIS FEWTRELL wrote the episode of Coronation Street going out on ITV1 at 7:30pm on Monday 4th May.

PETER FLANNERY wrote the first episode of the new series Inspector George Gently "Gently with the Innocents" going out on BBC1 at 8:30pm on Sunday 3rd May.

JEREMY FRONT wrote the episode of Murder Unprompted: a Charles Paris Mystery going out on Radio 4 at 11:30am on Wednesday 6th May.

ANDREA GIBB'S radio play Tough Love is going out on Radio 4 at 9:00pm on Friday 8th May.

DAVID HANSON wrote the episode of Hollyoaks going out on C4 at 6:30pm on Thursday 7th May.

DEBBIE HORSFIELD wrote the episode of All the Small Things going out on BBC1 at 9:00pm on Tuesday 5th May.

MARK ILLIS wrote the episode of Emmerdale going out on ITV1 at 7:00pm on Thursday 7th May.

MICHAEL JENNER wrote the episode of Waterloo Road going out on BBC1 at 8:00pm on Wednesday 6th May.

JULIE JONES wrote the episode of Coronation Street going out on ITV1 at 8:30pm on Friday 8th May.

BILL LYONS wrote the episode of Emmerdale going out on ITV1 at 7:00pm on Monday 4th May.

JIMMY MCGOVERN wrote the episode of The Street going out on BBC1 at 10:45pm on Wednesday 6th May.

PAULA MILNE's political thriller End Game goes out on C4 at 9:00pm on Monday 4th May with a cast including Jonny Lee Miller, Derek Jacobi and Timothy West.

DAVID NOBBS co-wrote the episode of Reggie Perin going out on BBC1 at 9:30pm on Friday 8th May.

GARY OWEN'S new play Amgen:Broken is on at the Sherman in Cardiff till May 9th, then at Clwyd Theatr Cymru from 12th to the 16th.

TIMOTHY PRAGER wrote the episode of Robin Hood "Do You Love Me?" going out on BBC1 at 6:20pm on Saturday 2nd May.

MARTIN RILEY has a feature in The Stage this week in the Q and A section on page 12.

TRACEY SPOTTISWOODE'S radio play Solo behind the Iron Curtain is going out on Radio 4 at 2:15pm on Tuesday 5th May.

RICHARD STEVENS wrote the episode of Doctors "Code of Silence" going out on BBC1 at 1:45pm on Tuesday 5th May.

BILL TAYLOR wrote the episodes of Emmerdale going out on ITV1 at 7:00pm on Tuesday 5th and Wednesday 6th May.

DAN TETSELL co-wrote the episode of Rudy's Rare Records "Roots Manoeuvres" going out on Radio 4 at 11:30pm on Monday 4th May.

JOANNA TOYE wrote the episodes of The Archers going out on Radio 4 at 7:00pm from Sunday 3rd till Friday 8th May with each episode being repeated at 2:00pm the day following its original release.

STEVE TRAFFORD wrote the episode of Midsomer Murders "King's Crystal" going out on ITV1 at 8:00pm on Wednesday 6th May.

Carol Anne Duffy is new Poet Laureate

From BBC News:

Carol Ann Duffy has been named as the new Poet Laureate, the first woman to be appointed in the 341-year history of the post.

Duffy, 53, who takes over immediately from Andrew Motion and will serve 10 years in the position, says she will give the £5,750 annual payment away.

The author, who is best known for her collection The World's Wife, is also the first Scot to be named Laureate.

Duffy said she felt "very honoured and humbled" by her appointment.

BBC News also has a profile of Carol Anne Duffy by Mark Savage.

Critics have praised Duffy for her storytelling (her works have been called "minutely compressed novels") and even more so for the way she seems to inhabit her characters, memorably described by novelist Charlotte Mendelson as "ventriloquism".

UA Fanthorpe 1929-2009

The poet UA Fanthorpe has died at the age of 79. There's an obituary in The Daily Telegraph.

UA Fanthorpe was much more inclined towards humour than sentiment, and was a mistress of the anachronism: she makes St George say, "I have diplomas in Dragon / Management and Virgin Reclamation", and Christ introduce his parables with such lines as "What did the high priest say / To the belly dancer?" Her use of a weary female voice to deflate the aspirations of orotund male poets anticipated the quips of Wendy Cope and Carol Ann Duffy. Even when writing about terminal illness, she could approach the subject in the spirit of Woody Allen: "Library fines and income tax returns / Have lost their sting."

BBC 2 planning 'event drama'

By Matthew Hemley for The Stage

New BBC2 controller Janice Hadlow has revealed she plans to make original drama “the major event of the week” on the channel and draw inspiration from its previous successes including literary adaptations and series such as Our Friends in the North.

Speaking exclusively to The Stage, Hadlow, who was previously controller of BBC4 and replaced Roly Keating as head of BBC2 at the end of last year, said she was looking for dramas that audiences know “no one else is going to do”.

Let's hope she heeds the words of Guy Hibbert (whose work she praises), and allows writers to write without interference.

Google Book Settlement delay

From Ryan Singel for Wired:

Google’s attempt to build the digital library of the future was slowed down significantly Tuesday, as the judge overseeing a landmark court settlement between the search giant and all U.S. copyright holders gave authors four more months to decide whether to join, fight or opt-out of the deal.

There's more background about the Google Book Search Settlement, including Guild advice to UK writers, on the Guild website.

BBC "right not to replace Tranter"

On his Guardian blog, Gareth McLean argues that the BBC is right not to replace Head Of Fiction Jane Tranter and commends their pursuit of a "flatter, simpler editorial structure".

...from the outset, the head of fiction post was a folly, an entirely unnecessary and anti-creative construction, an unhealthy concentration of power in the hands of one person. Who that person was is actually irrelevant. Such a consolidation of control over scripted comedy, drama, film and acquisitions is improper, irrespective of what you think of the person who wields the power. It was too big a job for one individual, regardless of how "good" their taste.

All Together Now? British Theatre after Multiculturalism

Michael Boyd, Richard Eyre, Vicky Featherstone, Kwame Kwei-Armah and Stewart Lee are among theatre practitioners who will be gathering at the Warwick Arts Centre near Coventry in June to discuss whether theatre has a role in defining Britishness and bringing communities together.

Titled All Together Now? British Theatre after Multiculturalism, the conference will be held over the weekend of 13-14 June 2009.

Under Labour, the arts were charged with challenging social exclusion, celebrating diversity and reasserting Britishness. But is there a contradiction between diversity and national identity? Should theatre foster cohesion or challenge it? If multiculturalism is dead, should theatre be promoting it? Is the theatre's role to encourage tolerance or provoke outrage? What has been the experience of the National Theatre of Scotland and the National Theatre on the south bank?

These and other questions will be debated during panel discussions, whose subjects will embrace national arts policy, how repertory theatres should relate to their communities, whether identity politics still has a role in drama's agenda, and if theatre should be allowed or even encouraged to offend. The conference will begin with a discussion on Shakespeare and history, led by the artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and it will end with a panel consisting of a former director of the National Theatre in London, the current director of the National Theatre of Scotland, and the chair of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad.

The current line-up of speakers includes playwrights Richard Bean, Howard Brenton and Kwame Kwei-Armah , comedian and writer Stewart Lee; directors Richard Eyre, Simon Reade, Michael Boyd (RSC) and Jonathan Church (Chichester); Barrie Rutter of Northern Broadsides and Vicky Featherstone of the National Theatre of Scotland; Stuart Rogers of the Birmingham Rep, and Lisa O'Neill-Rogan of the Bolton Octagon; academic Lynette Goddard, commentator David Aaronovitch and writer Kenan Malik; Barbara Matthews of the Arts Council, Conservative arts spokesman Ed Vaizey MP and 2012 Cultural Olympiad chair Jude Kelly.

The conference organisers are playwrights Steve Waters, Julie Wilkinson and Guild President David Edgar, playwright/academic Dan Rebellato and Janelle Reinelt of Warwick University. In December 2007 the organising group produced a sell-out one day conference on the last decade of British Theatre (How was it for us? Theatre under Blair) at the Writers' Guild Centre in Kings Cross.

The Warwick Arts Centre conference starts at 11.00am on Saturday 13 June and finishes at 4.00pm on Sunday 14June. The registration fee is £100 (£50 student rate) which includes attendance on both days and a conference banquet on Saturday evening. Onsite accommodation for the Saturday night is available at a supplement of £50. Bookings can be made at the conference website.

For other booking methods and enquiries, please contact Janelle Reinelt at j.reinelt@warwick.ac.uk.

The conference is supported by generous contributions from Royal Holloway University of London, the University of Warwick, and Warwick Arts Centre.

Apple rumoured to be planning 'Mediapad'

Despite the relative success of Amazon's Kindle e-reader in the US, it might take a company like Apple to bring such devices to the mainstream. Rumoured plans for a 'mediapad' - like an iPod Touch but with a larger screen - could be the start, reckons David Coursey for PC World.

The larger screen would be a more pleasant way to view movies or the Internet than an iPod or iPhone and the device could have decent speakers, too. By using a touch screen, Apple could save space necessary for Kindle's keyboard, resulting in a smaller device.

While not pocket-sized, the Apple mediapad would be easy to carry and offer an entertainment experience a smaller device could not match. Reading a book might be such an experience, right?