The Hay Writers’ Circle celebrates forty years of writing together.
In 1979 our founder, Frances Copping, had moved to Hay from Wimbledon and wanted to find a writers’ group. Failing to do so she decided to start one herself and the Hay and District Writers’ Circle was formed. For forty years our group has gathered twice a month to challenge themselves with exercises and to share their writing. We have published magazines and pamphlets, organised competitions and performed our work at recitals, Christmas pageants and at the Hay Festival. This year we are proud to celebrate our fortieth anniversary with our Founder and President still an active member of our group.
The group enjoys writing in many forms. We practice our hand at poetry, fiction and non-fiction, and encourage writing for many reasons; to exercise an opinion, to amuse, to challenge, and to keep our minds and our pens sharp. Some of us aim for publication, and achieve it, some of us strive for competition success, and achieve it, and some of us write for the joy of writing and sharing it, with friends, over cake.
Our original meetings on Tuesday afternoons are now complemented by a Work in Progress sub-group that meets on Sundays, and with two workshops a year, Fiction in October and Poetry in February, both of which are open to non-members. We encourage interested prospective members to join us as Guests for a few sessions to get a feel for the group.
To commemorate our anniversary we are hosting a display in the new Hay Library this summer and will be running a competition to find a new writer to add their voice to our own. Every month we shall be sharing on our website what writing means to us, and what being part of a writing group adds to our experience.
THE HAY WRITERS 