Guildford Book Festival

2010 Short Story Competition

We are pleased to announce a brand new writing competition for this year's Festival, in collaboration with the Surrey-based e-publishing company, Commutabooks.

Our competition is open to both new and established authors. We are looking for short stories that inspire and uplift readers to make the most of their days and their lives.

Commutabooks specialise in producing interactive eBooks for smartphones like the Apple iPhone, Google Nexus and the many eReaders such as the Amazon Kindle and the Apple iPad.

Commutabooks is the brainchild of local author and author's mentor Tom Evans who is also known as The Bookwright. They are designed to be read, listened to and watched in a single commute.

The prize is to convert the winning story into an "App" so it can be downloaded worldwide from the Apple iTunes store and read on the Apple iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. The App will also have a professionally recorded audio track so it can be listened to AND a video interview with the author. The prize also includes cover design, structural and copy editing and page design and layout.

As an example to inspire you, you can download one of Tom's self-penned narrated stories for the iPhone:

Get '100 Years of Ermintrude' FREE from the iTunes store here

The deadline for competition entries has now passed. Short-listed authors will be notified by 30th September 2010. For any queries, please email Tom Evans.

Guildford Book Festival begins search for a new First Novel Sponsor

We are urgently searching for new sponsorship to support the highly regarded annual First Novel Award.

The Award was inaugurated by the late Douglas May, of Guildford financial advisers Pendleton May. Douglas worked with the Festival organisers to establish the competition for a first novel published by an author residing in the UK, with the winner announced during the annual Guildford Book Festival.

The Award is well respected in the publishing world and entries are invited from authors across the UK. Last year, it attracted over 90 entries from both small and large publishers. Organisers are keen to increase the prize money this year, and hope that it will raise the profile of the Festival and the Award, especially in its 20th anniversary year.

Last year�s Chair, Andrew Holgate, Literary Editor of The Sunday Times, stressed the importance of Awards to encourage new writers. The organisers need to secure a minimum of �7,000. The prize money will be �5,000, with the remainder going towards the administrative costs of the Award. Unless a sponsor comes forward before the end of March, the Award won�t be able to continue this year.

Previous heads of the judging panel for the Award have included well known authors Margaret Drabble, Fay Weldon and Kate Mosse. Over recent years, the panels have selected as the winners novels by authors such as Hari Kunzru, Panos Karnezis, Clare Clark and Mike Stock. Last year�s winner was Ross Raisin with God�s Own Country, and in 2007 Catherine O�Flynn was announced as the winner for her novel What Was Lost which went on to win the Costa First Novel Award.

The winner of the First Novel Award is announced at a Presentation Dinner held during the Guildford Book Festival in October each year. We feel that at this time of recession it is more important than ever not to lose such a well established strand of the Festival and hope that a new sponsor will be forthcoming.

For further information about Guildford Book Festival and the Award, please email Glenis Pycraft or call 01483 211720.

Family Day, Saturday 25 October 2008

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The 2008 Guildford Big Read is Well Under Way!

Guildford Book Festival launched an exciting new initiative for this year � The Guildford Big Read. Festival organisers chose novels by the much loved Guildford-born author P. G. Wodehouse for the Big Read.

		At the end of this year's Festival an evening celebrating the life and work of P.G.Wodehouse was held. Hosted by Jeff Thomson.
The capacity audience enjoyed readings from Jonathan Cecil, Lara Cazalet and Jeff Thomson. Tony Ring, the UK's foremost authority on all things Wodehouse, talked about the life and work of the endearingly popular writer. There were songs from Hal Cazalet and Eliza Lumley, accompanied by Stephen Higgins on the piano and a demonstration of Tango dancing by Flavio de Brito and the Tanguera Dance Company.

"We were really eager to run an event which everyone could join and the timing for the launch was just perfect - eighteen of Wodehouse�s titles have just been re-issued by Arrow Books this summer and 2008 is also the National Year of Reading" explained Glenis Pycraft, Festival Director, about The Big Read.

Schools and Young Readers

We had another great programme of events for schools this year!

In 2009, well over two thousand children from local schools were able to meet and talk to authors visiting the Festival.

Alex Milway After art school Alex spent many years in magazine publishing before publishing his Mousehunter series. The young mouse-keepers Emmeline and Scratcher have lots of fabulous adventures involving mice and pirates in fast-moving and atmospheric tales.
	Steve Voake Steve was headteacher of a village school before becoming a full-time writer. Author of The Dreamwalker�s Child, The Web of Fire and The Starlight Conspiracy. His latest book is Blood Hunters - not your average fantasy story. Along with a fast-paced plot is a moral heart that addresses the impact humans have on the planet and the possibility of nature fighting back.
Alexander Gordon Smith Following the success of The Inventors and The City of Stolen Souls Alexander now has a brand new series for teenagers. Furnace is a terrifying underground prison where juveniles are sentenced for life with no chance of release. His events involve lots of audience participation and advice on how to write!
	Caroline Lawrence Caroline Lawrence studied Classical Archaeology at Cambridge and her love of history brings Rome to life in this the final book in the Roman Mysteries series. The Man from Pomegranate Street was published in June.
Conn Iggulden & Lizzy Duncan Author of The Dangerous Book for Boys and illustrator Lizzy Duncan talk about the explosive world of Tollins and introduce some remarkable little creatures, who may be smaller than fairies, but are about as fragile as a house brick.
Gaby Halberstam Gaby's debut novel Blue Sky Freedom was shortlisted for the Waterstone�s Children�s Book Prize 2008. Her latest is The Red Dress, set in 1944 in the sweltering South African wilderness, about a family and first love and contrasts life then as a white girl and with life as a non-white.
	Paul Collicutt Taking his inspiration from the Marvel comics, Paul has been working on the Robot City Adventures for ten years. They are a series of graphic novels where highly developed robots are part of everyday life. Paul is an illustrator and will be working with a group of art students.
Dugald Steer Well known as the author of the �Ology� series (Dragonology, Wizardology). He has now written The Dragonolgy Chronicles featuring Daniel and Beatrice. They cross many continents, befriend a colourful collection of new dragon species and escape from the clutches of the evil Aleaxandra Gorynytchka � the future of dragonkind lies in their hands.
	Emma Dodd Emma has written and illustrated several picture books including I Thought I Saw a Dinosaur. Her latest book, Miaow Said the Cow, is a tale of farmyard havoc. During Emma�s events she draws her characters for the children. Emma will be at Ash Library for a schools� only event.
Cathy Brett Cathy�s first novel, Ember Fury, is half novel, half graphic novel. Cathy is an illustrator and writer and now lectures in design, unashamedly plundering her students� lives for sensational storylines and characters. Cathy will hold a graphic drawing workshop.
	Thomas Docherty Thomas's latest book, Big Scary Monster, is an energetic picture book with an anti-bully message. His earlier book, Little Boat, was shortlisted for the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal in 2009 and To the Beach was longlisted for the Big Picture Best New Illustrators awards 2008.
Ruby Stark Ruby's book, Lulu is a Ladybird, and is the first in a series of Bugbites Books which are delightful introduction to the world of insects and other creepy crawlies. The books engage children�s interest through stories woven with threads of natural history.
	Jim Helmore & Karen Wall Jim and Karen recently won first prize in the Dundee Picture Book Award for Who Are You, Stripy Horse? Karen works as a textile designer when she�s not creating picture books and Jim works in the publishing industry. Their new book is called Oh No, Monster Tomato!.
Philip Ardagh An event of exceptional silliness. Beardy Ardagh, resident of Grubtown talks about his new book in the series The Far From Great Escape. You won�t find Grubtown on any maps. The last time any map-makers were sent anywhere near the place they were found a week later wearing nothing but pages from a telephone directory and calling for their mothers.

Short Story Competition 2007 - Runner-up

End of Summer By Mrs Chris Hazelgrove

Level with her travel stung eyes, the name plate gleamed: St Joseph�s Home for Orphans. She re-read it, knew the summer holiday was over, knew that the life she had always known was over.

There was no journey in her memory, and Lily could recall no packing up, no goodbyes to school friends or family at the gate, no overnight stay somewhere to make possible the long and difficult transfer she and her mother must have made.

�Well, here we are ,� her mother said, in that particular way she had of stating the obvious. She put down Lily�s tiny cardboard suitcase, and leaned more heavily on the wall of the porch.

A chill gust of wind flipped under the hem of Lily�s coat, finding her bare knees. A swirl of brown leaves chased, breaking formation against the brick red porch before whisking upwards and away.

One small leaf remained trapped in a cobweb, abandoned and flapping as its fellows soared and parted company.

That she had arrived here in Surrey from her seaside home in Lancashire dismayed the child, not least because she had taken the precaution of leaving her favourite pink-striped pebble in the church after Sunday school.

She had hummed to herself through weeks of round-the-table speculations by uncle, her teacher, the vicar and a social worker. She strove to close her ears to the unwelcome information, rejected their final decision.

But it had happened anyway; they were sending her away to this place.

The building was vast. Bigger than the rectory or Royal Albert Hotel, the facade loomed. Between the grizzled walls and cerulean sky a white clock tower showed slices of a huge grey bell.

She clutched her mother�s hand, before turning to look back. Lawns fell away for a distance even greater than the park near the sea front at home.

A fringe of trees formed a dense right angle where hobgoblins might live and where brown-gold leaves conspired to hide the road along which their bus must have travelled.

Four parallel white lines were just visible in the centre of the grass expanse. A memory, sudden and sharp, struck her as her nostrils evoked the fading summer, its whitened kneepads and linseed oil stoked onto cricket bats.

She recalled that blistering day her older brothers were called from the pavilion to stand with their heads bowed before their mother, how the players awaited their return to the game by tossing the ball from hand to hand, dabbing bats into the crease.

They wore black armbands their mother had made, later transferring them from their white shirt sleeves to khaki. Lily remembered too the sleepy-body smell of her sister in their shared bed and the family�s noisy tears on the day the great black car drove up.

One side of the grass square was bounded by rougher growth, now yellowing. Fresh-painted football posts stood sentinel at either end.

The child and her mother stood on the fourth side, at the top of two steep terraces. Lily imagined lying on her side and rolling down them, one after the other, reaching the cricket pitch in one go and then running - running for ever and ever.

Incipient tears pricked at the lining of her nose and stung her eyes. In this unfamiliar place she ached behind her face and in her throat. Her tummy churned in a confusion of pains she knew even omniscient grown-ups would not understand.

She wanted above all things to go home. She felt dwarfed, shrunken like Alice in Wonderland when she obeyed the label and drank the potion.

Aunts, who only occasionally visited, would frighten her, saying �My how you�ve grown. If you go on like this you�ll hit the ceiling.� Now the reverse was happening and she had dwindled in this vast landscape, outside this huge house that would never be home.

There was hardly a sound: no gulls careening, no rigging clattering, no voices even, though her mother had promised her lots of children to play with. There was no grown-up chatter like in the kitchen at home, no wireless, no shouts of anger.

She recalled bursts of laughter rising from the street outside at night. But here, over the swish of the wind in the branches, she heard only a brown bee that zinged as it batted at the powdery mortar gripping chunks of flint in the wall.

The glossy green paint of the doors had been sun-blistered into crisp domes. Lily�s fore-finger itched to press them and feel those bulges burst, as she had burst the tar bubbles on the sun-baked road at home.

A shining brass disc set into the flints had a tempting centre of white porcelain with the word press in firm black letters. Focusing on the bell push to prevent the fall of welling tears, she said, �Do you think we should ring it?�

�Perhaps we�ll just knock�, her mother replied, as though that were a more modest, more acceptable method of attracting attention. Mrs Dyson stretched out her hand to the black iron stirrup on the door, but her gesture coincided with the movement of Lily�s finger, as, Alice-like, she obeyed the white button�s instruction and pressed.

Along with the crack of the knocker sounding against its plate, the bright chime of a bell echoed inside the house. A rumble of metal followed, as a bolt slid from its housing.

The doors parted and between them a lady with cheeks of spreading redness smiled down. She held onto the knobs, one in each hand, and bent her head forward, assessing.

Lily grabbed a fistful of black serge coat, remembering now who this stranger must be, and why they were here. She saw that her mother had paled and watched her lips flutter with words reluctant to leave her mouth, watched her tongue flick in and out. She loosened Lily�s grip and straightened up, pushing her little suitcase over the threshold with the end of one crutch.

�I�m Edna Dyson, and this is Lily,� her mother said, nudging the child forward.

The lady�s hand was a soft, warm weight on Lily�s shoulder. When the matron began to guide her through the double doors she looked round for reassurance.

But her mother had turned away and Lily only saw her hunched back retreating, and heard only the uneven crunch and scrape of her crutch as she shuffled away down the gravel path.

Short Story Competition 2007 - Winner

Openings and Endgame By Richard Cutler

People say Alitsa Krasnovaya is the worst street in Moscow. It is in the 12th District and is no more than an alleyway overhung by drab buildings. It runs from an exit of the Locomotiv ground to the Bulganin Cemetery. Never swept.

Football fans urinate in it, there are frequent knifings, murders, robberies and rapes. At night it is lit only by a single street lamp. Yet, surprisingly, it has a redeeming feature, No 24 - a house wedged in between two shabby tenement blocks.

More than a house, it has a fine garden running down to the cemetery itself, and once had been lived in by a cultured family and their son, a doctor. Sumner and winter the shutters were closed, blinds down - no one entering or leaving - no visitors, no police, no-one official � not even a cat being put out, or a dog let in.

24 was the house of a non-person, Streltsky, a man who had once received a Stalin Star, a brave doctor and surgeon on the front line of the People�s War against Fascism. That was until he was convicted of cowardice. He was not shot but was sent back to Moscow in a cattle truck with other criminals.

His trial before General Maximov and two tribunal comrades was swift. Streltsky was stripped of his university degrees and declared a non-person - no name. A number � 242424. His house number in triplicate - General Maximov�s joke

Forty years alone - his wife and family had left him. Who could live with a nobody? A divorce, for the doctor was no more, officially dead. These are facts. I looked after many such files for the KGB. The rest comes from sources I cannot reveal.

I protected his house by making it a non-place. I was taught by his father - he does not know me. During these decades of withdrawal Streltsky devoted himself to reading, not great Russian works though his lather had taught literature once at Kharkov University, but chess.

He followed all the great tournaments, televised and in the press, studied books on moves and tactics, knew the names of the chess correspondents by their first names and patronymics but they did not know he existed.

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Adult Workshops 2010

Every year we have a varied programme of workshops which are very popular and sell out very quickly. We will advertise the 2010 Festival workshops here as soon as they are programmed � so please look out for them!