Maggie Cobbett

Swanwick 2025

The second week in August always finds me heading for Derbyshire to enjoy all that the Writers’ Summer School has to offer. Situated in the Hayes Conference Centre with its magnificent gardens, it’s the perfect place to unwind and swap ideas with friends old and new.

The rooms in the Main House vary considerably in size and layout, but I have always chosen to be in Lakeside, built over a century later. Accommodation there is more or less standard, although this year I was given a ‘family room’. (The extra bed came in handy for packing and unpacking.) Unless a delegate has mobility issues, the allocation seems to be random, but everyone has a private bathroom with soap & towels provided, a hairdryer, plenty of wardrobe space – I always take extra coat hangers – and tea & coffee making facilities.  There is also free wi-fi.

The programme is so extensive that difficult choices have to be made every year, which no doubt contributes to the fact that so many of us keep coming back.  Volunteers with purple lanyards help new Swanwickers to settle in, host special tables for them at dinner the first night and are available throughout the rest of the week if needed. People may, of course, choose to be alone, but no one needs to be lonely.

As well as attending the opening session of Della Galton’s excellent course on writing short stories to make money, I ran a workshop on crafting lucrative ‘fillers’ – there seems to be a theme here – and launched my new book. The hat was only intended to be a prop, since a few chapters are set in cowboy country, but I did wear it for a photo with one buyer at her request!  More later about the hat!

It has become a tradition for Jen Wilson and I to co-host the prose open mic and this year we had more people than ever wishing to take part. That meant that, out of fairness to all, we had to go into a ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine to fit everyone in and I was the timekeeper. Apologies to those I had to cut off in mid-flow, but you were all very gracious about it.

Fortunately we finished before the bar closed for the night. If ever a stiff drink were required…!

The following evening saw me taking part in the poetry open mic, which was equally oversubscribed, but the lovely Alison Chisolm was in charge of making sure that everyone got a fair shot and she did. (Probably with more charm than I managed to muster yesterday.) Beforehand, I learned a lot about poetry competitions from Emma Purshouse & Steve Pottinger, a multi-talented duo from the Black Country, and attended a talk by Dr Russell Wate, probably best known for being the lead detective in the notorious Soham murder case. Chilling stuff and I had his course on authentic crime fiction still to come.

One very popular feature of Swanwick over the last few years has been the opportunity to submit in advance a five-minute play to be rehearsed and then performed as a scripted reading towards the end of the week. The plays chosen by independent judges are handed over to a team – this year composed of Neil Zoladkiewicz, Lesley Deschner and Phil Collins – who allocate to each one a director and actors from those who volunteer to take part.  The trio comprising director Bear Stephenson and actors Helen Clough and Andy Cain did a fine job of bringing my script to life. Things aren’t what they used to be, or are they? was set in ancient Rome, but that fact was only revealed right at the end. Some issues just rumble on and on, don’t they?

I was very proud of all of them and hope that we might work together in future.

The hat made a reappearance later on. A theme is chosen each year and, although it’s always optional to wear fancy dress, I find it great fun. This time, by happy coincidence, it was the turn of the wild, wild west. As well as a disco, line dancing was on offer to anyone with sufficient energy left at the end of another very full day.

Not really one for selfies, I was caught napping by Morgen Bailey at the farewell meeting. That was fine, because I had previously enjoyed her course on editing fiction and was delighted to discover that one of her clients is a favourite author of mine. A.A.Dhand, whose crime novels are set in Bradford, came to Swanwick a few years ago on my recommendation and was given a standing ovation at the end of his talk. Not only that, but he returned later on as a tutor and has been going from strength to strength ever since. Virdee, a television adaptation of his first two novels, was very well received last year.

I’m still trying to figure out how to get rid of the smell of wood smoke from the outfit I wore at the final event, singing and toasting marshmallows around the firepits in the grounds. Most other years, that would have been a chilly experience, but the fine weather has continued all week. We were so lucky!

Before we knew it, the final breakfast was over and those of us not heading for Derby railway station were waving off the coach in the traditional Swanwick farewell. Roll on August 2026! 

15 August, 2025 - Make the first comment on this story