Category: News

The sold-out Secret Storytelling event at this year’s Birmingham Literature Festival was wonderful…

The venue was The Roundhouse – an old industrial building on the canals in Birmingham city centre. It used to be where the barge horses were stabled; now it is being renovated by the National Trust. It was a perfect place to tell ghost stories! Fabulously atmospheric and without electricity, so we finished the show in near darkness.

I was joined for the performance by four participants from a workshop I had led earlier in the week: How to Tell a Great Ghost Story.

Thanks to Lee Allen for the great picture of me!

Thanks to generous funding from the Arts Council England, I have been able to launch a new storytelling club in Coventry, based at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum. It’s called The Mee Club. I’d love to hear YOU tell a story… Visit the Mee website to see how you can get involved!

I had a wonderful time at Sydney Literature Festival. I led a full day storytelling workshop and performed a show called DARK ENCHANTMENTS with the fabulous Australian author Kate Forsyth.

What an extraordinarily beautiful place Sydney is. So often, famous places disappoint. They are so iconic, so photographed, your expectations of them are unmeetable. But Sydney Harbour is totally wonderful, especially by night.

I’m back from my latest adventure! I began in Hanoi and spent three weeks travelling down the coast of Vietnam, via Hue and Hoi An, to Saigon. Then I spent a few days exploring the Mekong delta before flying to Goa on New Year’s Eve. And Goa was where I stayed for a month.

I wrote most days, but I’m still not sure if it will ever be published. Sometimes it’s nice just to write for your own pleasure 🙂

Now I’m gearing up for World Book Day – which is something of a misnomer, because it has become a sprawling beast for many authors. I am booked solid for the whole of the week and the two weeks either side. I’m not complaining, but it does get overwhelming when you’re doing four sessions a day, five days a week! You find yourself talking while your brain is shouting at you: ‘Have I already said this?!’ The answer is YES, but you haven’t the slightest idea when it was 😀

And then I’m off to Nigeria, with a group of fellow authors, poets and illustrators. We’ll be working in an international school in Lagos for the week. That should be a whole lot of fun!