Writer Philippa! AND The Amazing and Preposterous Constance Smedley

My interview with prolific writer Philippa Roberts is being broadcast again tomorrow [Tuesday March 9 at 4pm ...it was a great interview and I want to make sure that all Art Lot fans who may have missed this due to the freak power-cut get a chance.

So listen in! 107.9 or http://www.stroudfm.co.uk/ from anyhwere in the world!

Philippa is a freelance who actually makes her living from her writing and she has some great tips for wanna-bees.

She has published ebooks, short stories, poetry, reviews and journalism, at intervals, over a period of about 20 years. Her work has appeared in a wide range of publications, from children’s magazines, Horizon and Aquila, to Cadenza and Quality Womens’ Fiction. It has also appeared in a number of anthologies, including children’s poetry from OUP. Philippa edited print editions of Winter Jasmine, The Golden Glory has Fled and A Wartime Poetry Journal - books of poetry by her grandmother, Effie M.Roberts - for her own publishing company, Fractal Publishing. She is at present working on a script and a mystery novel.

SEE THIS PLAY!

Recent Art Lot guest theatre-man Chris Garner sends this:

‘The Amazing and Preposterous Constance Smedley’ : Studio Theatre of The Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham. 11-13th March.

"In the early part of the twentieth century, Constance Smedley was a celebrity: a successful artist, playwright, feminist journalist and author of numerous novels and children’s books. She founded the International Lyceum Club for Women, established its clubhouse in London, and oversaw the foundation of similar Lyceum Clubs all over Europe. A century later there are Lyceum Clubs worldwide.

"Constance Smedley lived in Minchinhampton during the five years leading up to the First World War. Together with her husband, the artist Maxwell Armfield, she organised theatrical and musical entertainments, set up a toymaking co-operative, opened a bookshop and organised a spectacular Pageant of Progress in Stroud, out of which grew the Cotswold Players. She also found time to write three novels as well as several plays which the Cotswold Players toured round villages in the Stroud valleys under her direction.

"Frank Hatt’s play is based on events in the remarkable life of this woman, made all the more remarkable by the fact that from childhood she battled with a disability that paralysed her from the waist down. Her achievements were indeed amazing; her behaviour was often preposterous.

"‘The Amazing and Preposterous Constance Smedley’ tells the story of a slice of forgotten local history. But it also tells a bigger story: of a disabled woman with forty publications to her name, who contributed significantly to the women's movement, the international peace movement and the avant-garde theatre of the early twentieth century.

"Six of Frank Hatt’s previous plays have been performed professionally, mostly touring Gloucestershire and the south-west. They include ‘Walking to Whiteway’, ‘Not In My Back Yard’, ‘Surfing the Severn’ and ‘Against the Grain’.

"His interest in Constance Smedley was aroused when he was presented with a large bundle of Smedley family letters that a lady had rescued from a builders’ bonfire."

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Tune in! 107.9 locally, or from http://www.stroudfm.co.uk/ anywhere in the world!