Next in our tour of the UK, Marilyn Rodwell answers my questions about the Birmingham Chapter
Thank you for
inviting me to take part on the RNA Facebook blog. It's a pleasure to come on
here and tell you about our Birmingham Chapter. We don't have a fancy name,
because Birmingham speaks for itself! But you never know what will happen in
the future.
How long has the Chapter been running and where do you meet?
I have no idea
how long we've been running, but I started attending in 2003, and took
over the organising of it almost 5 years ago. We meet for lunch in the
Edwardian Tea Rooms of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery,
Chamberlin Square, Birmingham, which has lovely new décor and
fabulous ambience.
How many members usually attend your meetings and do they, as with
so many of our groups, revolve around a meal?
When I started,
we had about 8 members and sometimes it would be just 4 or 5 of us at
meetings. In the last few years we have grown, and now have 30
members on our books. We also have visitors from the Leicester Belmont
Belles pretty often. We usually have between 15-22 attend meetings.
Meals are
definitely included. We have lunch between 12 noon and 2.30pm. We mainly
chat about our writing over lunch, tell of our successes, and share our
woes.
It’s lovely to see such an increase in your membership. Is your
Chapter open to non-members of the RNA?
Yes and no. We
tend to welcome people whose membership has lapsed. Some of these
were unable to get into the New Writers's Scheme. However, we do not actively seek
out non-RNA members to join us. We have had a lot of new RNA members
join us over the last couple of years.
Can you tell us about any speakers or guests you've had in the
past year?
We tend not to do
much of this, as we meet in a very busy place that can be noisy. However, we
have had the pleasure of having Jean Fullerton last year who visited us and
sprinkled some of her pearls of writing wisdom over us, for which we are
grateful.
We also
had Sue Moorcroft the previous year, to run an all-day Writer's
Workshop, which was fabulous, at the new Library of Birmingham. We used the RNA
grant to help fund this event.
Previous to that,
I had a Writer's Day at my home and one of our members, Emma Daley, presented
to us the ins and outs on publishing on Amazon.
What do you have lined up for the rest of 2016?
We have just had our Writers Day on March
5th, at a lovely venue, The Radisson Blu Hotel, in the centre of
Birmingham. The day went very well, and we had 25 attending from 3
Chapters. We used our RNA Grant left over from last year to subsidise
our brilliant speakers - Alison May, Sally Jenkins, Bella Osborne,
Helen Barrell, and Lizzie Lamb. The feedback I had from the attendees was
excellent. Thank you to the RNA for facilitating this.
What in your opinion makes your RNA Chapter so special?
That is
a hard question to answer without bragging! In fact, I may
suggest that we can rename ourselves, The Brilliant Brummies. We
have grown quite fast in a short space of time, and at times it seems
overwhelming, particularly when we try to organise events. But we really
appreciate our meetings because we meet only a few times a year. This
is due mainly because some our members come from as far as
Shropshire and Cheshire.
The most exciting
thing about our Chapter is that with our growth and our support to each other
we have had a number of success of all sizes. This year, we
have three people nominated for Romantic Novel of the Year Award in March
- Alison May, Bella Osborne, and Janice Preston. All three started at the
Birmingham Chapter in the New Writer's Scheme, and we have watched them become
multiple published, and win various awards over the last few years.
But the Chapter has also recently seen other successes, such as short
story publications, long listed and short listed for various prizes and
competitions, self-publications and traditional publications,
prizes, articles published in magazines, and non-fiction publications.
What a thriving group you are - and I love idea of The Brilliant Brummies! Who is the contact for new
members?
That will be me -
marilynrodwell@btinternet.com
Thank you for
having me on your blog! Telling you about us has been a pleasure. Don't
forget, we welcome all visitors.
Thank you for joining us, Marilyn. I have no doubt you will
receive many applications to join your Facebook group.
The RNA blog is brought to you by,
Elaine Everest & Natalie Kleinman
If you would like to write for the blog
please contact us on elaineeverest@aol.com
