Creative Writing Awards 2011 & Writers' Workshop

Rebekah Lattin-Rawstrone

William Ivory

The winners of the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust’s Creative Writing Awards for April 2011 are:

Best Fiction: Matthew Smith (Wimbledon, London, England, UK)

Best Thriller: Fergal Casey (Ballinteer, County Dublin, Ireland)

Best Screenplay: Cathy Hogan (Kilkenny & National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland)

Best Under 21 Writer: Nathan Ellis (Oakham, Rutland, England, UK)

Best Berkhamstedian: Emily Beauchamp (Hertfordshire, England, UK).

Prizes will be presented in Deans' Hall, Berkhamsted School (Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, UK) at the Graham Greene International Festival on the afternoon of Saturday 1st October 2011.

The judges would like to thank all the entrants --- from as near as Greene’s home town, Berkhamsted, and from as far away as Canada --- for their excellent efforts and fine writing. There were many interesting and individual texts, and a great range of styles and subject matter, allied to abundant enthusiasm and impressive commitment to the project. Although Awards were not made in the categories of Travel and Old Berkhamstedian, nevertheless the entries were a credit to the writers in all instances. In the category of Travel the entry from William Whyte (Great Chishill, Hertfordshire, England, UK) was commended by the judges.

The titles (or starting-points) for the Awards in April 2012 will be released at the Festival in October 2011, when there will be a joint Creative Writing Workshop in prose and screenplay writing, led by Rebekah Lattin-Rawstrone (above, top) and William Ivory (above, below). This course will include the professional writers' introductions to two disciplines (in which Graham Greene excelled), shared considerations of sample materials and the writers' guidance in an opportunity to write creatively in one of the genres.

The event will be completed by attendance at Lee Langley’s talk on “Traps and Escapes”. Lee Langley is an award-winning novelist and travel-writer. She wrote the screen adaptation of Graham Greene's The Tenth Man (USA, 1988), and she will talk about the pleasures and problems of adaptation and the lure of faraway places to writers of fiction. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Rebekah Lattin-Rawstrone's first novel was Home (Social Disease, 2008), and she is currently working on her second. She teaches Creative Writing at City University (London) and The Bishopsgate Institute (London). She is a partner of Apis Books, an independent publishing company for shorter fiction, and she was the founder of the writers’ forum Tales of the Decongested.

William Ivory wrote the screenplays for Made in Dagenham (UK, 2010), which was nominated for a BAFTA Award, and Women in Love (BBC, 2011). He is a writer for television, film and stage. He is the author of A Thing Called Love (BBC, 2005) and The Sins for which he won The Edgar Allan Poe Award in New York presented by The Crime Writers Association of America for Best TV Drama Series, and he is the creator of The Invisibles (BBC1, 2007). In 2009 he was awarded an honorary D.Litt. by the University of Nottingham, UK.

Michael Brennan and Lee Langley will speak at Festival 2011

At the Graham Greene International Festival Michael G. Brennan (above, top) (Professor of Renaissance Studies, University of Leeds, UK) and the writer Lee Langley (above, below; photo, Daily Mail) will be the guest speakers in Deans’ Hall, Berkhamsted School (Berkhamsted, UK) on the afternoon of Saturday 1st October 2011.

Prof. Brennan will speak on “Faith and Authorship in the Early Novels” of Graham Greene. Recently he published Fictions, Faith and Authorship (Continuum, 2010), which is a comprehensive reconsideration of Greene’s exploration of faith, doubt, literary versatility and authorial identity in his fictions and other writings.

Award-winning novelist and travel-writer, Lee Langley will speak on “Traps and Escapes”, and will discuss the pleasures and problems of adaptation and the lure of faraway places to writers of fiction. She wrote the screen adaptation of Greene's The Tenth Man, and she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Prof. Brennan’s research interests include: (i) the writings in manuscript and print, literary patronage, and public careers of the Sidneys of Penshurst and the Herberts, Earls of Pembroke, of Wilton between 1500 and 1700; (ii) the writings of Graham Greene and in particular various aspects of religious faith in Greene’s fiction and his travel writings, his close and creative relationship with Evelyn Waugh, and the often polarised responses of literary biography to Greene’s career; and (iii) travel writings in manuscript and print between 1500 and 1700, especially relating to Western Europe and the Levant.

He welcomes enquiries from prospective research students who are interested in pursuing topics relating to Renaissance Studies, Graham Greene and Travel Writings.

Lee Langley is the author of several novels, including Changes of Address (1987), a largely autobiographical account of her childhood in India and the first in a loose trilogy of novels set in India. It was followed by Persistent Rumours (1992), which won the Writers' Guild Award (Best Fiction) and the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region, Best Book), and A House in Pondicherry (1995). Her novel, Distant Music (2001), spans six centuries in a narrative that begins on the Portuguese island of Madeira in the fifteenth century, and ends in London in the year 2000. Twice she has been short-listed for the Hawthornden Prize.

She has also written several film scripts and screenplays, including television adaptations of stories by Rumer Godden and Barbara Taylor Bradford's A Woman of Substance, as well as a play, Baggage.