Alastair Upton, Chief Executive at the BluecoatThe Bluecoat was packed for the Orange Prize reader’s day. A whole bunch of women writers – Bel Mooney, Katte Mosse, Lionel Shriver, Philippa Gregory, plus the judges Shami Chakrabarti and Clare Allen – came to the Bluecoat to talk about their work.

The day started with all the writers on a panel and then the audience split up into groups and dispersed to different rooms around the building to work with one of the authors.

 

Two years ago we had discussed how well the building would work for readers and writers, as there were lots of spaces on different scales. On Saturday we used the library, which takes 20, the Sandon, and Garden rooms, which have 60 and the performance, space with 200. On top of that there was the bar, the hub area and the garden and courtyard for informal work.

 

This was the first time we had tried it and the building buzzed which was a great warm up for our literature festival in October. The plan is to make it like this for 10 days.

 Kate Mosse, was presiding on the Saturday, as she founded the Orange Prize in 1995 which must have been when I first met her but this was the first time I had seen her for a while. 

 

Shortly after we met I sat in on a in a creative writing session she was leading when she explained to the group how you had to ‘find your voice’ as a writer. Kate warned that it might well not be the voice you imagined you would have and the process might be like a singer who thought they would be Tom Jones but when trained discovers they were Smokey Robinson.  

 The warning seemed heartfelt so I’ve always wondered  what voice she had thought she would have?  Whatever it was she looked well on the million copies she has sold of Labyrinth (and that is just the UK edition).