Writing on Air Festival 2019

The beauty of radio in the internet age is the listen-again function, which means that when a local station's annual celebration of writing blossoms into a four-day extravaganza featuring hosts of established and emerging, amateur and professional writers from across the region, you don't have to try and take it all in at once.

Last month was my fourth year of being part of the Writing on Air festival from East Leeds FM (Chapel FM as it's sometimes known, it being based in a converted chapel complete with organ and stained glass) and it continues to be a pleasure. Because it's a community arts venue there's some great encouragement for young writers in the area, and I particularly enjoyed Scattering Sounds, which collected some writing from the Associate Writers group. Throughout the festival there were interviews, discussions, readings; poetry, prose, drama; the topical, the evergreen; gravity and humour.

You can see some of the bustle of the festival (including Keely and Karen rehearsing) via the Chapel's photo collection on Instagram, and all the programmes from this year's festival are available to listen to online on the ELFM player (last year's festival is still available too, and many of the participants appear regularly on ELFM throughout the year).

This year I featured in The Food of Love with Rosalind Fairclough and Emily Devane, where Emily and I read three of our stories each, Roz read three of her poems, and throughout it all we had marvellous, specially-arranged accompaniment on cello (Keely Hodgson) and violin (Karen Vaughan). You can listen to us, or you can even watch the video we didn't realise was being recorded (don't worry, you don't need a Facebook account to access it).

(And for those few who still haven't heard the radio drama Roz and I wrote for last year's festival, here's a direct link to listen to it now).