What is the name of your society?
Write Club OU Society – we cover all aspects of creative writing, from fiction to poetry, to scripts and children’s stories, and we also welcome non-fiction.
When and why were you formed, and who were the founding members?
We were formed by the 14J cohort of A363 the Advanced Creative Writing module. In February 2015 we got together to find a space where we could continue the support and advice we had built up amongst ourselves.
The founding members were Adele, Rachel, Betty, Bev, Kate, Lucy, Shirl, Shelley, and myself (Cinnomen McGuigan). Five of us are still tangentially involved.
What is your current membership?
1692 members as of today (November 22 2021).
Who is on your committee and what do they study? Tell us a bit about yourselves!
The committee currently (although we will change a bit in December at our Annual General Meeting):
Chair – Cinnomen GcGuigan. I have just finished the Creative Writing MA and started an Access course to prepare me for Social Sciences.
Treasurer – Adele, who is currently between modules.
and Tracy, who also did the MA Creative Writing, and is looking to start PGCE soon.
Most of us on the committee have done or are doing the creative writing modules. Many are currently on study breaks doing some actual writing.
What do you like to do together?
We have a monthly drop in session on the last Sunday of the month, and we actively get involved in Book Club, as we tend to have a big overlap in membership.
We push daily prompts and writing advice on our Facebook group.
We run summer activities on the forum space which is where we share our work too.
We also are hard at work getting the latest in our anthology series out. We are doing a book on parenting, to complement the ones on Social housing and Generational differences. We will be launching the next one at our AGM in December, and it will be about Superheroes – real and fictional.
Can you tell us about a particularly good past event, or something coming up to look forward to?
We delivered a great session at the last face to face conference (in 2018). We always have a great time at the virtual ones, obviously, but seeing a range of students who are interested in writing in the same room working from our prompts was fab.
We are currently looking forward to the book launches of the next few works. We did one to go alongside the OU’s 50th Birthday too.
You can find all of our books here: Write Club Author Page
How can students get in touch with you to join and get involved?
To join you just need to be interested in writing, and be a past or present student or staff member of the OU. We have no fees and you can email us at WriteClub@gmx.co.uk or join our social media spaces via the Facebook Group.
You can also see our video here: Write Club – I write therefore I am…
Thanks for sharing Gabby, really appreciate it.