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Ken McGaffin, committee member and moderator for the evening, gave a warm and enthusiastic introduction for Henry Bell: the editor-in-chief of the award-winning Gutter magazine, widely published poet and most recently a successful biographer. The evening was organised in two parts, the first an exploration of Bell’s biography – John Maclean, Hero of Red Clydeside.… Read More »An evening with Henry Bell: biographer, poet, editor – 13 January 2021

Gathered round our screens, we waited for the Sanquhar Santa (aka Jeanette our President) to read us a story, to give us some cheer, to reassure us about whichever Covid Christmas ghost might haunt our festive prospects. Instead, we were encouraged to time-shift – between a balmy May evening and driech gloomy one of mid-December.… Read More »‘Twas the night before Christmas: a Party and Awards Evening – 9 December 2020

There was a good turn-out for this extremely lively, entertaining and (exercise-wise) challenging talk by Jenny Lindsay. As one of Scotland’s best known spoken words performers and winner this year of a prestigious John Byrne award for critical thinking (the only award she has ever won, she told us modestly), she had plenty to impart.… Read More »Poetically Performing Spoken Theatre, with Jenny Lindsay – 2 December 2020

Carolyn O’Hara kicked off the evening with a rousing and heartfelt introduction to her friend and fellow AWC member, Greta Yorke. She touched on Greta’s long association with AWC, her career as a primary school teacher, her love of language and her success as a writer of both fiction and poetry; including the many awards… Read More »Humorous Poetry: Rhyme Time with Greta Yorke – 25 November 2020

The second club night of the 2020-2021 season proved that Ayr Writers’ Club members’ pens and fertile imagination are always at the ready. Jeanette launched us off with a selection of ‘what if?’ writing prompts. The first one was What if you could go forward to the end of 2021. What has changed?             Interestingly,… Read More »Ghosts, Invisibility and the Spectre of a Certain Mr. D Trump – 11 November 2020

On Wednesday twenty of us gathered by Zoom to hear Donald Reid’s talk. I didn’t know what he was going to tell us except that it was related to writing non-fiction. However I ended up with seven pages of notes, because he provided so much information on topics he is passionate about. Donald retired after… Read More »Mining the facts: articles and non-fiction with Donald Reid – 4 November 2020

‘Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans’ said John Lennon. Certainly for myself, there has been plenty of ‘life’ happening when I… Read More »Title-less tales and twisting plots: an autumnal Readaround – 28 October 2020

“God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December” – J. M. Barrie I was aware of a buzz of ‘boxed’ excitement… Read More »Fifty years, and still going strong; a celebration – 14 October 2020

Wednesday evening arrived with its now familiar online AWC session over Zoom. As usual, I was frantically logging onto my laptop at 19.28 for the… Read More »Letting it escape into the big wide world: novel writing workshop with Jennifer West – 7 October 2020

Eleven AWC members logged in, from the comfort of their living rooms or studies, to our first socially distant feedback night – plus Carrie who… Read More »Let’s Breakout the Babycham and Feedback! – 30 September 2020

Writers’ Club members are taking to the new Zoom format like the proverbial water-fowl. Session 2 of the new season was a club night, in… Read More »A Burgling We Will Go: club night visitors – 23 September 2020

Welcome to the 2020/21 Ayr Writers’ Club season! Opening night went without a hitch on the first of our LIVE Zoom sessions. This year’s President,… Read More »Zoom in for the opener – 16 September 2020