Appledore Author Visits

On 26th September we had the pleasure of hosting three vising authors for a range of workshops and talks as part of Appledore Book Festival’s Schools Week. This takes place every year and sees published authors visiting schools in the local area to inspire students to engage with writing.   

The morning kicked off spectacularly with a Year 9 workshop from Luke Palmer on creative writing, or ‘destructive writing’ as he called it. Students were tasked with choosing an object from a table of obscure bric-a-brac before writing part of a story based on that item and why it meant a lot to a particular character. Having established this, they then described that item being broken.  Year 9 did exceptionally well with this task and it was a joy to see what stories they came up with for toy dinosaurs, ceramic cupcakes and even a toy lizard!

After break our Year 8 cohort welcomed back Lisa Williamson who has visited Braunton many times now.  Lisa’s talks are always dynamic and vibrant, focusing on  her Bigg School series, The Art of Being Normal and her journey from shy schoolgirl to actor in pantomimes and John Lewis adverts to… published writer! She held her questions raffle at the end of the session and lucky Leon won a copy of one of Lisa’s Bigg School books. Her books are also readily available in our school library should students wish to borrow one.  

Finally, the afternoon saw a great talk and workshop from author of ‘Girl, Boy, Sea’, Chris Pick.  He spoke to our Year 7 group about the importance of writing about topics you’re passionate about, being inspired by other writers and not overthinking the process. He gave feedback on story ideas to all our workshop students and, an avid surfer himself, ended his session by answering many questions about his adventures from some of our budding wave-catchers.  

We hope to welcome the authors back next year for Schools Week and we’re proud of our students for their active engagement and respectful behaviour.    

If students who attended either Luke Palmer or Chris Pick’s workshops and have not yet collected your signed copy of their book, please come to Room 66 to collect.  

Feeling inspired by the author talks?  The creativity doesn’t stop there! Come along to Creative Writing Club every Tuesday 15:30-16:30 in the Library.  Limited spaces - please see Miss Reed to enquire.