Coastal Currents – Short Story Competition
A chance for local unknown writers On 30th September, as part of the Coastal Currents month, Hastings author, Joan Taylor-Rowan, will be reading three of her art-inspired short stories at the Jerwood Gallery. Joan has invited other writers to submit…
HIP READ – Paper And Ink #13
Tales From The Bar Side Hastings’ own local literary zine has just published its thirteenth issue. Paper And Ink has already achieved cult status in the national and international underground poetry and short story scene and its limited print run…
HIP READ – Coming Home For Good Personal Reflections On Homelessness By Roger Nuttall
Hastings self-published author Roger Nuttall is a nurse co-ordinator for Hastings Homeless Service. Coming Home For Good, as the back page blurb explains, charts his personal journey from teenage rebellion and a period of penniless itinerancy in the USA through…
Hastings poet nails London rap battle
Chalked Out is a new spoken word battle league where battlers are given time to research and write about their opponent and then invited to deliver the ‘writtens’ in front of an audience – and all without a beat. The…
Write on in Hastings – MARCIA WOOLF
Pete Donohue catches up with hastings author Marcia Woolf ahead of the imminent publication of her second novel Woolf confesses to being a late starter. Although she’s ‘always written’, it was the long train commute between the South coast and…
HIP – LGBT LIT
We want to tell you how… A new anthology of poetry and prose written and edited by gay women features two of Hastings & St Leonards’ most celebrated lesbian print and performance writers. We want to tell you how… is…
Peace, Poetry and Jeremy Birch Trees
It could not have been a better afternoon weather-wise to celebrate the civic life of a much-loved former Labour leader of Hastings Borough Council. Saturday 5th May saw the Peace Garden in Alexandra Park fill with friends, family and political…
BOOK BUSTER REVIEW – John Cornelius
REVIEW BY PETE DONOHUE Once you know the history of John Cornelius it’s difficult not to hear his poetry in your head, as you read it, with the deadpan wit, understated emotion and local-accent musicality of the 1960s Liverpool Beat…
Poetry corner 100
local media gets hip PETE DONOHUE the day local media got hip was born out of disillusion with what a small group of us saw as blatant misrepresentation of tight-knit community cohesion in a town of creative compassion which vultures…
Write on in Hastings: Joan Taylor-Rowan
HIP literary editor Pete Donohue catches up with local author and creative writing course provider Joan to get her story When I was eight years old, I discovered that my local newspaper in Portsmouth had a children’s page called The…