BRONTË FESTIVAL OF WOMEN’S WRITING
Venue: Cobbles and Clay Café, Main Street, Haworth
Join academic Laurie Garrison, and novelists Sarah Dunnakey, Jane Davis and Helen Taylor for a discussion on the growth in alternative methods of publishing – including online and self-publishing and crowdfunding – and the growing importance of online self-promotion in growing and developing a loyal audience of readers.
Admission is free and refreshments will be available to purchase.
To read more about our panellists, please see below.
Laurie Garrison is an academic, writer and advocate of women writers. Having founded Women Writers School in 2016, she is currently working to create an online, international network of women writers as well as a suite of courses to help them develop and promote their work. She has previously held positions at Rutgers University, Royal Holloway and the University of Lincoln. Most recently, her #womenwriters Twitter chat was described as ‘hearteningly radical’ by the Guardian Books Blog.
When Helen Taylor's novel The Backstreets of Purgatory was accepted by the crowdfunding publisher Unbound in 2016, she couldn't have been more naive about what lay ahead. Or more spectacularly unprepared. She had no real social media presence, had never sent a tweet in her life, didn't have her own website or even an author Facebook page - pretty much the perfect qualifications to give advice on how not to run a crowdfunding campaign. But after ticking off almost every mistake in the crowdfunding handbook, her campaign took off and was a success. Helen will discuss what she did wrong, what she did right, the trials and moments of humiliation and (minor) desperation, but particularly the positive aspects of the process that were wholly unanticipated. The Backstreets of Purgatory reached its target funding in February 2017 and will be published by Unbound later this year.
Jane Davis is the author of seven thought-provoking novels. Her debut, Half-truths & White Lies, won the Daily Mail First Novel Award and was described by Joanne Harris as 'A story of secrets, lies, grief and, ultimately, redemption, charmingly handled by this very promising new writer.' The Bookseller featured her in their 'One to Watch' section. Six further novels, which straddle contemporary, historical, literary and women’s fiction genres, have earned her comparisons to more seasoned authors such as Kate Atkinson and Maggie O’Farrell. Writing Magazine and the DSJT Charitable Trust have named An Unknown Woman their Self-Published Book of the Year 2016 by Writing Magazine and the DSJT Charitable Trust.
Jane lives in Carshalton, Surrey, with her Formula 1 obsessed, beer-brewing partner, surrounded by growing piles of paperbacks, CDs and general chaos. When she is not writing, you may spot Jane disappearing up the side of a mountain with a camera in hand.
Sarah Dunnakey's debut novel 'The Companion', published by Orion in 2017, is a story of buried secrets, set on the West Yorkshire moors in the 1930s and the present day. When she's not writing fiction, Sarah sets and verifies questions and answers for a variety of TV quiz shows including Mastermind, University Challenge and Pointless. She has previously worked as a librarian, an education officer in a Victorian cemetery and an oral history interviewer.
Sarah has won or been shortlisted in several short story competitions and her work has been published in anthologies and broadcast on Radio 4. In 2014 she won a Northern Writer's Award, from New Writing North after submitting part of The Companion. She lives with her husband and daughter in Hebden Bridge. Follow her on Twitter @SarahDeeWrites.
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