As part of the annual Book Week Scotland, OxPen Writers have launched their current collection of short stories and poetry.
Who are OxPen Writers?
A long-established (fifteen years and counting) creative writing group, based at the Pentland Community Centre in Edinburgh. Originally, we received Council funding, but for the last few years we’ve become – by necessity – independent and voluntary-based (courtesy of financial cuts, cuts and more cuts). Currently, we’re a core group of eight women, all fifty-plus, all with a different writing bent – poets, novelists, flash fiction and memoirists – and all at various stages of our writing careers. One of us is our nominal tutor, but none of us is any more or less a member (or writer) than any other. And we’re not a women-only group! That’s just the way it’s worked recently but fundamentally, we’re a place for any aspiring writer – age, gender, experience immaterial.
And Why ‘OxPen’?
That’s an easy one: Pentland Community Centre in based on the Oxgangs estate in South-West Edinburgh: therefore OxPen. That ‘pen’ forms part of the name is a very happy accident!
Tell us about ‘Tales of Dark and Light’
We started out with a few sessions on life-writing and using memories to create stories – fact and fiction. Each of the pieces in the book emerged from the exercises we did: some are very clearly very close to our lives, others have taken on a life of their own. Beyond that there’s no theme or intention, but the title, Tales of Dark and Light, relates both to the eclectic tones of the writing: tragedy, comedy, imagination, reflection, and to us as writers. Telling our stories makes us, the invisible women more visible. It brings us from the darkness into the light.
What’s the OxPen dream?
Funding! And a big handful of book sales. Good health. The freedom – for everyone – to write and have their stories heard and appreciated. Continued happy Thursday mornings where we put ourselves and the world to rights.