This Little World: stories from Dorset Writers

About a year ago I became involved with an exciting initiative from the Dorset Writers Network. The idea was to run a series of writing workshops across rural Dorset to encourage people to have a go at writing a short story set in the county. These stories could then be entered it into a competition being run by DWN for inclusion in an anthology.

I ran workshops in my local village hall and at a local secondary school as well as being involved in the judging and mentoring for the adult entries.

There have been many people involved throughout the process and on Saturday the project reached its culmination with the launch of the anthology This Little World: Stories from Dorset Writers.

The This Little World book launch and Writers Day took place at Dorchester Library. At the launch event the organisers talked about the project and some of the featured authors read out their stories. A couple were stories that I had picked out which is a lovely feeling, but I have to say I was particularly impressed with the children’s entries! What a wealth of young talent this county has!

As well as the launch itself there was a series of writing workshops covering all sorts of subjects from writing dialogue to poetry and screenplays and The Littoralis (me and fellow local authors Laura James and Kathy Sharp) hosted a panel event where we discussed our experiences with our publishers. Despite all of us being published by small mainstream publishers our routes to publication and our experiences of the process couldn’t have been more different!

The whole event was extremely well attended and the anthology sold out within minutes! But fear not. The paperback version is available on Amazon and an e-book edition will be following soon. It is packed with a wealth of wonderful Dorset set stories and would make a perfect Christmas present.