Telltales at Port Eliot Next Week!
July 15th, 2010 | Published in Frontpage, Port Eliot Festival 2010
Not long to go!
Yesterday Telltales readers had their first read through before Port Eliot Festival, working out the running order, planning the links and generally getting to know each other a bit before next Friday when we’ll take to the Walled Garden stage to wow Port Eliot Festival goers just what the Cornwall writing scene has to offer.
Our readers are , Felicity Notley, Emma Timpany, Alan Robinson, Rupert Wallis and Fi Read, with the brilliant Mac Dunlop pulling the whole set together. The theme, chosen by Katherine St Germans herself, is Hidden Secrets and each writer has really drawn on the theme with their piece, creating a varied, engaging, pacey and cohesive set. It’s going to be swell.
If you are heading up, we’re on the Walled Garden Stage from 2.00pm, (check the programme for more details).
Day tickets for Port Eliot Festival are £30 so if you have some spare time on Friday and fancy coming along to check us out please do, we’d love to see you there. Oh and of course there’s lots of other great stuff to enjoy too.
Writers Biographies
Felicity Notley
Writing has been an important part of my life since I was seven years old. At that time my cupboard was stuffed with shoeboxes filled with stories, ideas for novels and the odd attempt at a playscript.
I studied French and German literature at university and found myself stunned (in two senses) by the rich and unending possibilities of literature, with the result that I went underground for about 10 years.
In 2004 I took up my pencil and started writing again. It was like being a fish in water after a long exile on dry land.
I write articles, short stories, poems and am currently writing my first novel. A poem of mine will be published at the end of the month in an anthology called “Inspired Minds”.
Emma Timpany
Emma Timpany was born in the far south of New Zealand and finds wild and remote scenery of her birthplace inspires much of her writing. She recently completed her first novel Under The Wave, about the resonance of loss over time and is currently writing her second. One of Emma’s stories was a runner-up in a competition and is published on-line. Another story was highly commended in this year’s Frome Festival Short Story competition and Under The Wave was long-listed for the Cinnamon Press Novel Award 2009. Emma’s love of writing was born out of a life long love of reading. She enjoys writing about what it is to be alive through the eyes of her characters here and now, and in other places and other times.
Alan Robinson
Following an English degree and an early novel I more or less shunned literature for some years to become a trade union activist and Blues musician. I then started writing for cabaret, which led to drama scripts. I took an MA in Writing for Film and Television at the Northern Film School in Leeds. My short film, “Follow On” was shown on TV and some international film festivals. I won a BBC Writersroom initiative for new writing and had a couple of scripts short listed by BBC Drama. A stint of community writing led to a verse drama and a commissioned radio play, “Reuben’s Rainbow”. I am currently working on a full length screenplay about the near future under an austerity government, and a memoir novel, “The Studio Couch”, about a family crisis set in 1960.
Personally I’ve come full circle, with writing being a daily compulsion, a form of bearing witness which, when you get it right, produces an unbeatable satisfaction.
Rupert Wallis
Rupert lives and works in Cornwall. His poetry has previously been shortlisted for an Eric Gregory award and his work has recently been accepted onto the ‘free-reads’ scheme run by the Arts Council in the UK. Currently, he holds a place on a mentorship scheme for authors in the South West, also run by the Arts Council, and is writing a novel for children.
Fi Read
An ex-pat Aussie who struggles to find the time to write (as life keeps getting in the way) according to her tax return, Fi is a bona fide self-employed freelancer. A regular contributor to Cornwall Today magazine for the past 2 ½ years, she also writes a weekly column for The Cornishman newspaper, has been both a script mentor and media/press person for AWEN productions, and is currently working on a year-long digital archive film extravaganza called the Tre Project.
Fi is also an occasional short-story writer and poet, who for the past two years has organised and hosted Tongue Pie, Golowan Festival’s annual spoken word event, and prior to that, ran regular monthly storytelling nights at Yam Parlour Cafe in Penzance. And having been accepted onto Exeter University’s South West Writers Mentor Scheme, this year she’s meant to be writing ‘that book’!
When she’s not writing (which, let’s face it, is most of the time) Fi’s pulling pints at the Acorn Arts Centre, busting moves at Life Drawing classes, singing with legendary 10-piece ska band Pondlife, and doing the whole single-mum of four bit. And she’s a granny! Twice voted Mock Mayor of Penzance, in her spare time (ha) she’s put together a 1930’s inspired synchronised swimming team, likes to go surfing (really badly) tramping along the coast path, and rides her trusty Raleigh Maverick everywhere.