‘What if you had to leave your home and you could never go back? What do you think that would be like? ‘For millions of Syrians and other people from around the world, these are the question they face. The current desperate situation in their homelands and the mass migrations from the Middle East is …
Science vs art ‘I feel deeply that the adversarial idea of science versus art is a false dichotomy’ says RLF Consultant Fellow Doug Johnstone on the RLF Consultant Fellows blog. And although some scientists may not see themselves as creative, inspiration is key to scientific writing. Fiction vs non-fiction I feel the same way about …
Feedback on our writing can arouse strong emotions. RLF Consultant Fellow Anne Wilson explains how we can use feedback to improve our work.
This week’s post from RLF Consultant Fellow Amanda Swift: Can you express the central idea or argument of what you’re planning to write, in a couple of sentences spoken aloud? This short but effective exercise works for both academic and creative writing. It will test the project’s roadworthiness before you start. You don’t need to …
Reading books is one of the most important routes to academic success for children, yet 1 in 8 disadvantaged children don’t own a single book. That’s what Maz Evans from Book Buddy explained at the Bookseller Children’s Conference in October 2018. Library closures The real solution to the problem is for the government to …
Yesterday, I was delighted to be selected as the winner of the 2018 Educational Writer’s Award, organised by ALCS and the Society of Authors, for Far From Home: Refugees and Migrants Fleeing War, Persecution & Poverty. The shortlist included a fine selection of books on themes of great interest and importance to young people: loos …
There’s going to be a documentary about the 14 ships stranded in the Suez Canal during the Six-Day War. I Catch Productions I Catch Productions are making the film for Al Jazeera. They are currently in the UK interviewing former seafarers who lived through the experience of being marooned on the merchant ships as war …
I was lucky enough to attend the Bookseller conference on children’s non-fiction last month, and that was one of the conclusions. We children’s non-fiction writers always feel like second-class citizens because when people talk about children’s books, they usually mean fiction. But with the renewed popularity of highly illustrated information titles and a …
Every year, Siegfried Hellwig organises a reunion of seafarers who worked on the German ship Nordwind – one of the ships that was marooned in the Great Bitter Lake for 8 years. Günter Schütt kindly sent me a photo of the gathering in Olberg.