Open the Door 2020: Monday 18th May

Introduction to Open the Door 2020

Calm Slam Finalists

See the poems from the finalists of the first ever GWL Digital Calm Slam.

Nature Writing with The Nature Library

Listen to a panel discussion on nature writing, featuring founder of The Nature Library, Christina Riley. Produced by Jennifer Wood.

Daily Reading List Curated by Book Bunk

We’ll be sharing reading lists from Monday to Friday. Today’s reading list has been curated by our friends at Book Bunk, a Kenyan charitable trust focused on the complete renovation and restoration of old library spaces as well as the installation of new libraries into public spaces.

Braemarnia: A Village’s Story of Nature and Myth

As Writer in Residence for the Braemar Creative Arts Festival, Open University tutor Rachel Marsh is working with the Highland village of Braemar to develop the first community-written novel, Braemarnia. Much of the village’s history is attached to its surroundings, with the mountains, the river Dee, and ever-changing environment acting as a character. The novel Braemarnia has followed suit, with the environment playing a key role in the plot.

Tune in for a short film about the Braemarnia project, with a focus on the novel as a collective effort that engages with the myth of nature.

No qualifications are required for most Open University undergraduate modules and you can enroll for one module at a time. You can try Creative Writing course content for free, on the OU site OpenLearn, such as Writing what you know or Start writing fiction. More info at www.openuniversity.co.uk/scotland

Samantha Clark Twitter Chat with Linda Cracknell

Samantha Clark is a visual artist and writer based in Orkney. She gained a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of St Andrews in 2017, received a New Writers Award from the Scottish Book Trust in 2018, and a Cove Park Emerging Writer Residency in 2020. “The Clearing”, her first book, was published by Little, Brown in March 2020. Join Samantha and writer Linda Cracknell for a Twitter chat about Samantha’s work.

#BirdsongHaiku

During lockdown, the GWL team have enjoyed our daily exercise outside and marveled at the range of different birds we’ve heard singing as we walked. We want to pay homage to the dawn chorus, the afternoon chirrups, and the evening chatter by encouraging #BirdsongHaiku Tweets over the course of the five days of the Open the Door festival.