Here's something for all those interested in creativity and in mental wellbeing: the Creative Minds podcast, part of the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival. It features novelist Linda Gillard whose books are loved by so many of us here at Cornflower Books, and it's certainly worth listening to. If you're short of time and can't stay for the whole programme (around 25 minutes), you can catch Linda's segments at 4.07, 14.13 and 20.00, and as you'll hear she talks about how writing gave her the 'mental breakthrough' she needed, how it has helped her live with bipolar disorder and how her first novel Emotional Geology
has inspired others to acknowledge and further their own creativity. The book Linda refers to as being enormously valuable to her in showing her the importance of valuing and responding to the creative impulse is Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives
by Louise DeSalvo.~~~~~
If you're in the market for a stimulating literary retreat, how about Gladstone's Library (pictured) at Hawarden in Wales? Among the events on their programme next year are a creative writing workshop with writer-in-residence Vanessa Gebbie (author of The Coward's Tale
which I greatly admired), and the short course, Looking Back: Introducing Neo-Victorian Fiction which explores "our enduring
fascination with the Victorians, both on the page and on the screen [and] offers the chance to examine not only why readers and viewers
love the Victorians so much, but the many ways in which they are brought
back to life.’ More details here.~~~~~
To mark National Poetry Day, Faber are giving away the audio download of Carol Ann Duffy's anthology Jubilee Lines
which features the work of sixty contemporary poets to mark sixty years of the Queen's reign. The work will be available from 7.00am today (4th. October) and you can download it here.
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