Darlington Writers Circle

Darlington Writers Circle

Founded - 1965 and I think still going over 30 years later.

Founder Members - Albert Hill, Greta Thompson, Mrs Robinson, Mrs Fuller.

Meeting Place -The first meeting place was Crombie's Restaurant on Tubwell Row, Darlington. They now meet in Bennett House, The Market Place, Darlington on the 1st Friday evening of every month except for August.

Main Activities - To discuss members writing progress, achievements etc; Members sometimes bring a current piece of work they wish to read and provoke a discussion and also receive constructive criticism. Some established writers in the group offer their advice. Their main aim of course is for every member to be published in their specialised line of writing.

Finance - The group is financed only by a small donation from each member which pays for the two hour rental of the room.

Publications - Darlington Writers' Circle produced a booklet of various pieces of work from poetry to articles and short stories in the early 1980's.

Notable Members- who are now established, published writers include - Isabel Dix (writing under pseudonyms for Mills and Boon), Rene Ord (writes contemporary romances under her own name for Robert Hale under pseudonyms for Piatcus, Hale's Black Horse Westerns and also Hale's Romances). Albert Hill writes as Elliot Conway for Black Horse Westerns. AJ Edwards writes for for Black Horse Westerns, R. Hale. Una Horne - Historical Novels, Ann Ormsby - Plays, televised and radio broadcast. BW Griffiths - short stories for Radio 4. Heather Bennett - short story writers and Creative Writing tutor. Margaret S. Browne short story for  Teenage Magazine. Liz Hankin - Teenage novels and adult historical novels. Alec Webster wrote articles published in Civil Service magazines and Scottish Magazines.

Other Details -The group includes poets such as Sara Newby, Violet Acres, Les Parsons, the late Greta Thompson, all of whom have had poems published in magazines, broadcast on local radio and television and have published their own books of verse over the years.

ANOTHER GROUP IN DARLINGTON

There is another group in Darlington that meets at Bennett House called The Darlington Writers Group

Bennett House, Darlington, Horsemarket.

(Otherwise called the Bennett House Writers Group). There are crossovers in membership and I've no clear details of this group except that it is run by Mary Sweeten.  The group participated in Merlin's Cauldron Festival in 1997 and Write Around and in 2000 while Trev Teasdel was based at Bennett House as a Development Worker for the WEA, the group, with the help of Trevor, organised a public reading for the group with guest poet Michael Standen. Trevor produced a series of Poetry Broadsheets for display in Bennett house for a number of months after National Poetry Day. (They will be on here as a pdf file soon.). Hope to get more detailed information of this group - their history etc.

Radio Cleveland Housecall Group- Some of the members were part of the Radio Cleveland Housecall group too in Norton -more on that in another post.