Vanguard at Harlow

Vanguard Readings is a London-based reading series that has been running monthly since 2011 and has so far included more than 70 events. Vanguard on Tour started in 2016 and has so far made stops at Grasmere, Birmingham, Hay-on-Wye, Margate, Norwich, Leeds, Ludlow, Manchester, Salisbury, Brighton, Sheffield, Huddersfield, Workington, Bristol - and now Harlow. Its founder, Richard Skinner, is a poet, novelist and Director of the Fiction programme at the Faber Academy - and credited on the back of many best-selling books.

The Harlow event is taking place at the Harlow Playhouse and is curated and hosted by local writer Emma Vandore, and showcases six new writers and established authors, all reading for around 10 minutes each. As well as Richard and Emma, who will read from her novel-in-progress And, Breathe, you will hear from Harlow-born Jason Cowley, editor of the New Statesman, who will read a recent memoir-essay published in Granta called New Town Blues; award-winning local playwright Simon Mawdsley, who will read with an actor; Dunmow-based YA author John Tarrow who will read from his recently published novel The Stranger’s Guide to Talliston; and J.S. Watts, a poet and novelist based in East Anglia, who will read from her second novel Witchlight.

 

Everyday Ghosts

Another ghostly tale from J.S.Watts sees the light of day this month.

It's a little early for Halloween, but, in this blackly humorous story, Owen would be grateful if Halloween never came by at all.

Everyday Ghosts is available to read online at Dark Fire Fiction

Buzz at Survision

Issue no. 5 of Survision Magazine has been published online. Based in Ireland, the biannual online magazine prides itself on publishing the most exciting Surrealist poetry of different trends and schools being written now.

J.S.Watts is honoured that she has a brand new poem, Buzz, in issue 5. You can read it for FREE here

Daylong

We tell ourselves ghost stories after dark because it's scarier that way and because ghosts come out at night, but what if they don't?

A brand new, haunting, daylight tale from J.S.Watts is now available on the Dream of Shadows website. Click here to read for FREE

Six Things I Wish Were Better Known

J.S.Watts has been chatting with Ivan Wise of the Better Known podcast about six things she wishes were better known: the painter Basil Ede, Poetry, The French Horn, Bats, Bartlow Hills and Chalk Streams. You can hear what she had to say for herself by going to betterknown.co.uk/2019/07/28/js-watts/.

For the record, she knows she got the location of the River Piddle wrong and is very embarrassed about it because half of her family come from Dorset...

The Better Known podcast website provides interesting links to all six things talked about, but, if you have the time and are interested, you also might light to check out:

Basil Ede: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basil_Ede

Bartlow Hills: http://wouldbephotography.blogspot.com/2019/04/bartlow-hills.html

Chalk Streams: https://waterlightproject.org.uk

Double Helpings in August

August's Writers' Club will be doing double, when J.S. Watts leads on two topics instead of the usual one.

The Seven Faces of Mister Death

Over on The Reaper today there is a brand new and rather dark poem by J.S. Watts, The Seven Faces of Mister Death.

For those interested in the technicality of such things, it is a prose poem with numbers. It may also be disturbingly contemporary.

To read the poem (it is free) simply click on the poem's title above.