Events – Debbie Young's Writing Life

Celebrating Words at Hawkesbury Upton Literature Festival

Posted on March 22, 2023 by Debbie Young

“Hello, Debbie, how are you? Busy with – whatever it is you do?”

This greeting from a neighbour the other day made me smile. It’s true that I do a lot of different things besides writing books, and even I have trouble keeping up with myself sometimes.

So I thought it might be a good idea to start sharing on my blog some of my various activities, just in case anyone else is wondering how I fill my days.

This week, I’m going to tell you about the Hawkesbury Upton Literature Festival, which I founded in 2015 as an affordable, accessible and fun bookish event for my village.

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Events, Personal life, Reading

Why Every Day Should Be a Book Day

Posted on March 1, 2023February 28, 2023 by Debbie Young

As anyone with a school-age child cannot fail to be aware, Thursday 2^nd March will be World Book Day. This annual event was founded by UNESCO to promote reading. While almost all schools do something special to celebrate books that day, they work hard to foster a love of reading all year round, and quite right too.

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Events, Family, Personal life

Now We Are 6(3)

Posted on February 8, 2023February 9, 2023 by Debbie Young

How old will you be in 2023? About to turn 63 as I’m writing this column, I’ve always been grateful for being born at the start of a decade and in the first month of the year. Being a child of the Sixties sounds far more exciting than a child of the Fifties, and it’s very easy to calculate my age at any time.

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Events, Reading

Swish, Swish!

Posted on February 1, 2023February 16, 2023 by Debbie Young

After volunteering to help man the Swishing rail at a village event run by our local Women’s Institute (WI) later this month, it occurs to me that perhaps I ought to find out exactly what I am letting myself in for. I know that in this context swishing means swapping clothes, but I’m intrigued by the derivation of the term.

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Events, Family, Personal life, Writing

My Past Writing Year

Posted on January 11, 2023January 10, 2023 by Debbie Young

Before sharing my goals for 2023, I’ve been looking back on what I achieved in 2022 – which was rather more than I expected!

At the turn of the year, when I sat down to set my writing goals for 2023 – more on those in next week’s post – I decided first to list my writing-related achievements in 2022, on the principle that writing a “what I did today” list always makes my next day’s to-do list look less daunting.

Here’s what I came up with (I’ve typed the numbers in figures rather than words to make it easier to follow):

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