Golden Egg Summer Social by Andrew Wright

14 Aug Golden Egg Summer Social by Andrew Wright

Posted at 13:21h in Guest Posts by Abigail Kohlhoff

All aboard the Penny Lane for the Golden Egg Summer Social – 6 July 2014

On a golden day golden eggs gathered from all points of the compass converging on the beautiful Bath for our inaugural summer social. The sun shone and so did the outfits, from the pretty formal to the just plain pretty. And although Eggs are meant to be shy, retiring writerly types, put them all together and there’s no shortage of laughs and conversation. And that’s one of the very special things about being part of Golden Egg (there are quite a few special things about it actually) the warmth and companionship of meeting fellow writers.

Writing is mostly done alone, but in Golden Egg you’re never lonely. The Golden Egg experience is obviously about writing excellent books for children. The editing and understanding of story is second to none, but Golden Egg is about being part of a community too. The combination of these two aspects is why it differs from any other editorial and support service in the market. And our second social (our first was an appropriately named Scrawl Crawl through London’s West End at Easter this year) was all about connecting, supporting and the joie de vivre of spending time with like-minded people.

Emma (Hot Pants) Greenwood GE Social Secretary

Our hostess with the mostest, the hot panted Emma Greenwood called all of us to order at 2pm on the 6th of last month for a highly civilised afternoon tea and cruise down the River Avon on a boat named Penny Lane. And after ducking low bridges, admiring each other’s hats and (for some) taking our shoes off, we kicked back and enjoyed each other’s company for four solid hours. There were talks from literary agents and long time Golden Egg supporters Ben Illis (sporting a linen suit) and Kirsty McLachlan (never seen out of jeans, apparently). Barry Cunningham also popped up to say hello, talking with great passion about story and representing the audience. “You’re not writing for me,”he told us, “you’re writing for the children and I’m just their representative.”

Eggs get ready to listen to the talks

Mother Goose saying hello and thank you

Mother Goose herself, Imogen Cooper, Senior Editor at the cluckingly lovely Chicken House until very recently, revealed some exciting news about future plans for Golden Egg, including among them some scholarships coming very soon. But amongst the talk of books, stories, writing and all things literary, it was a chance for many to deepen connections made on Twitter every Monday night 7:30 – 8pm at the Golden Egg Academy Question & Answer (hashtag #GEAQA).

Kay Vallely experiencing one of Matt Wood’s jokes

So we asked many lovely Eggs to sum up the experience for them in a suitably brief 140 character twitter post and this is a taster of their offerings. This is a live and interactive blog so if you were there and have something to add please do just let us know.

Our Golden Egg Summer Social by Eggers in selected Tweets:

Sharing the car with Emma, Matt and Jude – great fun. Sour sweets! Other things happened in the car that will definitely stay ‘in the car!

Telling Kirsty (agent) about my book and she was so excited about it that she thought it was a true story and that my characters were real people. (no pressure to try and write like that now, is there?!)

Trying to secretly get people to sign Imogen’s card without her knowing about it and seeing her face when I gave her the pimped up GE bag.

(Enigmatically we got this tweet) The beard, the beard and the beard!

Barry’s amazing talk, and his hat was quite nice too!

What a golden, golden, golden day.

Before today I was wondering what the collective noun for a group of Golden Eggs was and now I know; A Group Hug!

Watch this space for details of the next Egg Social, coming in October in Birmingham, a spooky, Halloween themed affair. Expectations are high; what fashionable accessory will Emma be wearing next? The mind literally boggles!

A massive thank you from all us to Emma for organising, for all of the Eggs for coming and for Barry, Ben, Kirsty, Rachel Ward (author of the Numbers and Drowning series), Sophia Bennett (author of Threads, The Look and You Don’t Know me, among others!) and Sophie Gorell-Barnes for coming to support.