I’m going to be judging a Flash Fiction Competition at Newcastle Arts Festival this year. Entries on any theme. 200 words or less. One entry per person, no age limit and it’s free to enter. The deadline is Friday 2nd August. Details of how to submit here.

Go for it!

Following the writing workshop that I’m running at Newcastle Arts Festival on 15th August this year, I will be giving a reading from Widows’ Row and some new material. Widows’ Row is set in Newcastle so I am really excited about this reading which is at the Anchor Bar from 7pm!
More details on the NAF website: here.

I’m running a fiction writing workshop at Newcastle Arts Festival on 15th August 2013. It will be at the Anchor Bar in Newcastle. More details here. Take a look at the rest of the programme as well- it’s going to be great!

What a whirlwind the start of the summer has been. We have recently had politicians on both ‘sides‘ of the divide here saying that the violence that we’ve seen in Belfast over the last couple of night was ‘inevitable’.

This is a lie.

Violence is not inevitable in this country. And neither is peace. We get to choose, every day, what we do to bring one or the other. Some people who might have reason to choose violence, don’t. Some of them choose peace.

Here are some of the other things that have happened over the last fortnight that make me love my country, my place, my home. These things are also part of choosing peace for Northern Ireland. Each event, from the public to the private, had many different people at it with the focus being on working and celebrating together. We don’t need politicians to tell us what is possible and what isn’t. We can decide.

My daughter spent the first week of the summer at the Dance Factory Summer School in Lisburn. Lisburn is my home town and when I see people working so hard to give local young people the opportunity to join together in music and drama I know that things are going to be better here. Thanks to Gyasi Sheppy and everyone else who slogged their guts out all week for this. It means such a lot.

The end of the week brought Pride to Belfast in more ways than one. The biggest LGBT celebration we’ve had yet in Belfast. Full of fun and colour as always. It’s pretty much my daughter’s favourite day of the year apart from Christmas and her birthday. A day of inclusion and diversity as so many different people from different groups come together to walk for equality and in favour of humanity. Great to see so many young people out enjoying the sun and one another’s company.

The next night my husband threw a party in our kitchen and we had music until the next day.

It struck me as I thought about these events that all of them were cross community. Some cross community events are intentionally  so for peace-building purposes, and some of them just are cross community because that’s how we live sometimes, even in a divided society. Everything counts. Have a happy and peaceful summer!