Memoir
A Borrowed Arboretum
Novelist and short story writer Wendy Metcalfe finds an unexpected haven in which to get some work done. One of my quests during lockdown has been to find beautiful quiet places to sit and write [… read more ]
writing
Memoir
89 Not Out: Day 89, They Think It’s All Over…
S&C contributor and Pompey Politics Podcast host Ian Morris shares his experience of the lockdown, as someone with diabetes. It’s finally here, Day 89 and Ian reflects on his experience as a daily writer for [… read more ]
Culture
89 Day Out: Day 60, Who Knows What Readers Want?
S&C contributor and Pompey Politics Podcast host Ian Morris shares his experience of the lockdown, as someone with diabetes. It’s Day 60 and Ian muses on the impossibility of predicting what audiences might like, or [… read more ]
Culture
MysteryFest 2019: Fun, Facts and Frolics in Crime Fiction
MysteryFest 2019, the key crime and mystery literature event of this year’s Portsmouth Bookfest – in collaboration with Mystery People – took place at Portsmouth Central Library on Saturday 9 March. S&C contributor Julia Davey reports. [… read more ]
Culture
Dickens and Doyle Wouldn’t Stand for Closing Blackwell’s Portsmouth
Following recent news of the proposal to close Blackwell’s Portsmouth, and confirmation from the bookshop’s team last week that ‘negotiations are ongoing’ between Blackwell and the University of Portsmouth, local writer Tom Harris highlights the [… read more ]
Culture
Bringing Agatha Christie into the Space Age Might Land Local Writer a Book Deal
Local writer Damon Wakes is working with online publishers Unbound to crowdfund the publication of his new book Ten Little Astronauts, a re-imagining of an Agatha Christie classic. Here, Damon shares the inspiration for his [… read more ]
Fiction
Portsmouth Writers’ Season: Fletch Mallory
S&C presents a story by local author Fletch Mallory, part of a collection that make up his recently released novel Stranded Foxes, inter-linked stories that jump through history and speak through a myriad of voices, [… read more ]
Reviews
Portsmouth’s New Writing Retreat: Fruitful or Fruitless?
Writers’ HQ launched their new writers’ retreat in Portsmouth at the end of July, and S&C’s Emily Priest went along with her developing novel to put it to the test. Writer’s HQ (WHQ) are the new kids on [… read more ]
Culture
Being a Full Time Mother is Not a Source of Shame
Madeleine Hagan is a student at the University of Portsmouth studying Creative and Media Writing. Originally from North Carolina, she likes telling stories about her experiences as an international student on her blog The Salt [… read more ]
Poetry
Magnolia Flowering in Cold Spring in Albany Road
Superior the knowing human glance that dreams, in lightly jostling verticals, ideas that make the candelabras dance, the whitened tips of candle flames that call to mind a burning icy chalice raised beneath the [… read more ]