WELCOME TO 2021!
As we said good-bye to 2020, we looked on to the new year with expectations and new hope. Unable to host our now customary January residential writing retreat, we look to the spring with abated breath as we pencil in our post-lockdown(3) dates for this April.
Things have been a bit quiet lately, but I have cherished the happy moments as they have been all the more precious!
We had some wonderful snow in the first week of January, and I was even able to try out some gentle langlaufing in the fields ( a first for me in the UK!). Crips morning walks in the wood and in the snow-covered fields proved to be positively therapeutic, with the crunching of the snow under foot and the muffled sounds of nature against the white rolling hills. I missed sharing these moments with retreaters and I thought I'd share a few pictures here.
While the house was quite quiet, I was kept very busy sifting through the many submissions that we received following the launch of Chapelgarth Writing Retreats AWARDS - Resilience and Resourcefulness in a pandemic! We received 30 submission from amazing female candidates across the whole of the UK! It was really hard shortlisting the candidates and the winners are yet to be announced. Watch this space - the names of the winners will be posted on social media and then on our website on 15th January..
The shortlisted candidates are:
Resilience in a Pandemic: Emma Nuding (York University)
Anna Hegland (Kent University)
Alice Raw (Oxford University)
Resourcefulness in a Pandemic: Nikki Rutter (Durham University)
Ana Luisa Serta (BBK)
Sonali Dhanpal (Newcastle University)
I am extremely grateful to our panel of judges, Dr Kate Carruthers Thomas (Senior Research Fellow/BCU Athena SWAN Project Manager at Birmingham City University), Dr Marzia Maccaferri (Associate Lecturer at Goldsmith College) and Dr Trudi Tate (Affiliated Lecturer at the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge) for their contribution in the decision-making process. As one of the judges pointed out, it would have been quite tempting to give everyone the prize - each one of them deserved a residential writing retreat!
This seemed to me even more necessary following the news that the country would be once again in lockdown...
I have therefore invited all candidates who were nominated for the CWR AWARDS to join me for three days of
LOCKDOWN FREE VIRTUAL WRITING RETREATS
- I hope many of them will be able to make it: they are a wonderful community of resilient and resourceful women and I can't wait to get started!
