Twisted Tales is all about promoting 21st Century Horror. The 21st Century has only just begun however and if the genre is going to grow and thrive we need to encourage and inspire the readers, and indeed the authors, of tomorrow. With this in mind we organised an event for a local school and got some authors in to read to them. This is hopefully the first of a series of Twisted Tales young-reader spin-offs under the provisional title "Little Terrors".
For this first event we put out a call and The Chainsaw Gang replied.
Two of their members volunteered to come to Liverpool and give readings (it was initially three but
William Hussey was unfortunately unable to make it). With the help of
Kirkby Library we were able to get two classes of kids from
All Saints School and
Jon Mayhew, author of
Waterstone's Children's Book Prize nominee
Mortlock, and Sarah Silverwood, author of the
David Gemmell Award nominated dark urban fantasy adventure
The Double-Edged Sword (aka
Sarah Pinborough). We were especially happy to be able to hold the event in a public library as we are conscious that at this time these institutions are under terrible pressure from the cuts and Twisted Tales is proud to help to promote them as crucial cogs in the literacy machine.
The authors both gave fantastic performances, answering questions from the largely well behaved kids, as well as giving spirited readings of their works. It was a pleasure to work on an event that was quite different in tone and spirit to the normal Twisted Tales fare and if it inspires just one of those kids to read something new (even if it's not horror), or better yet to get writing, then it will have been worth every second and more.
Below are a few select images from the event:
 |
| Jon Mayhew fielding questions |
 |
| Jon gets to grips with the text |
 |
| Sarah Silverwood expresses herself |
 |
| Sarah reading from The Double-Edged Sword |
 |
| Jon and Sarah |
 |
| Their books |
Our most sincere thanks to everyone involved in this event and to the kids for getting so into it. We hope we can run many more such events in the future but in the meantime - watch this space!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments on this blog are moderated. We will have them posted up as soon as possible, thank you for your patience.