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Age guideline 13+
About the event
How many different ways can we tell stories? We all have a story inside of us, a unique perspective on the world and a voice worth listening to. Sometimes the tricky thing is how to get that story out and finding the right tools to express ourselves. So here are three different creative people, writer and graphic novelist Alice Oseman, poet Rebecca Tantony and comic artist Gordon Shaw, to give you an insight into their storytelling journey and to give you some top tips and ideas on how to tell your own story.
Buy the Book here: Alice Oseman - Heartstopper Volume 1
Rebecca Tantony - Singing my Mother’s Song
How to access the event
From 1 January 2022, this event will move to our collection of Past Event Videos where you can access all past festival events for a small one-off fee of £5. Go to the top of the page to view Past Event Videos. Please click here to sign up or log in if you are already a member.
Teacher Resources
This event links with curriculum areas of PHSE, literacy and expressive arts.
Each explores how to use lived experiences and the world around us as the inspiration, motivation and expression of self.
Alice had publishing success at a very young age so her whole life is about storytelling and which medium works best for which type of story from novel to film to graphic fiction.
Rebecca uses poetry as a way to explore the world and her place within it. She offers simple ways to self expression through poetry making.
Gordon’s story is difficult to hear. As a young man he was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour. He uses comic book creation as a way to make sense and meaning of what was at first a cruel turn within his life.
Each participant offers insights into how different forms of creativity facilitate the telling of our own stories to validate our experiences and offer ways to build resilience and make sense of life’s challenges.
See below in Author Info for links to all the Speaker’s websites for further reading.
About the Authors and Illustrators
Rebecca Tantony is a writer, curator and facilitator fascinated by understanding the messy and wild human experience in greater depth. Living and working in Cornwall, she has read on the BBC, Radio Four, and was featured in The Guardian, who described her writing as, mesmerising. In 2017 she received an MA in Creative Writing and a distinction for her final manuscript. She is the author of collections Talk You Round Till Dusk, (Burning Eye, 2015) All The Journeys I Never Took, (Burning Eye, 2017) and her third collection, funded by The Arts Council U.K, Singing My Mother’s Song, which was released in June 2019. Rebecca has taught Creative Writing to BA students at Bath Spa University and Wits University Johannesburg. For seven years she has taught workshops in schools as part of the secondary curriculum, outside of schools to those excluded from education to ex-offenders, primary and the elderly. Rebecca believes everyone has a story and a unique way of telling it, with the right techniques and tools the route to creation is opened up and the opportunity to express becomes limitless. www.rebecca-tantony.com
Alice Oseman was born in 1994 in Kent. She secured her first publishing deal at 17 and has gone on to write three YA novels. She is now a full-time writer and illustrator. She can usually be found staring aimlessly at computer screens, questioning the meaninglessness of existence, or doing anything she can to avoid getting an office job.
Gordon Shaw is an illustrator and comic-maker, living and working in Leith, Edinburgh. Diagnosed with an incurable brain tumour in 2012, he created BITTERSWEET in reply. It features on Brain Tumour Research’s Recommended Reading List. His current project is a graphic novel that gives unpaid carers space to tell us their stories.
Twitter: @AliceOseman | @RebeccaTantony
Instagram: @aliceoseman | @rebeccatantony | @flashvsming
Facebook: AuthorAliceOseman | rebeccatantonypoetry | FlashGAha
Website: https://www.aliceoseman.com | https://www.rebecca-tantony.com
About the festival partner
This event has been programmed by Bath Children’s Literature Festival
The Boswell Children’s Festival draws its inspiration from people’s lives and as such is the world’s only festival dedicated to biography and memoir. An annual weekend of family fun uses fantastic facts to unleash a creative whirl of compelling talks and activities as young minds absorb life stories past and present in the wonderful setting of the Dumfries House estate in East Ayrshire. The Schools’ Day brings pupils from all over Ayrshire for a close-up encounter with an author, a fun tour of Dumfries House and the James Boswell Creative Writing Workshop, while before the Festival, authors and illustrators work on projects in the local schools. boswellbookfestival.co.uk