Introduction

Introduction

Five years of the Hall Writers’ Forum is surely something to celebrate! During that time, the Forum has been through several incarnations and its genius loci (Chough) has roosted on several different severs. Throughout, it has continued to grow and prosper.

Thanks must go, firstly, to Lucy Newlyn and Stuart Estell for founding the Hall Writers’ Forum on 9 February 2013 and giving us all somewhere to share and discuss our writing. I think everyone would agree that the Forum has been a terrific spur to creativity. At the time of writing, there are ninety-nine members, who have collaboratively authored more than thirty thousand posts on over three thousand topics. Many of these pieces would not have come into being - at least in this form - without the Forum.

Thanks must go, also, to the team of Forum Facilitators, who have helped to steer the Forum along its path, and to all of the members, who have contributed creative and critical writing with so much thought, perceptiveness, and dedication. The Forum has grown to become a formidable archive of collective memory and creative exchange, with a gift economy all of its own. None of this would have been possible without Andrew Breakspear, who provided generous technical support until the Forum’s ‘migration’ away from the College (it is now privately housed by Lucy Newlyn).

In recognition of this great archive of writing and sharing, it was decided to celebrate the Forum’s fifth anniversary with two publications, distilling some of the copious highlights. Many pieces on the Forum grew out of the various Challenges which members have posted along the way. Recently, the Weekly Challenges set by Alexander Bridge have become a mainstay of Forum life and creativity. The winning entries to these challenges will feature in their own, separate online publication.

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However, there are also many pieces which members have posted spontaneously, either as standalone pieces or as parts of a sequence. These pieces have been offered to the Forum for communal discussion and constructive critique. Several of them have also evolved in dialogue between Forum members as a result of critical and creative discussions on various threads. The aim of this volume Now We Are Five - is to celebrate this rich aspect of Forum life by offering what must necessarily be a small selection of Forum writing.

The book is structured in four parts. Part One contains celebratory pieces, which the contributors have written to mark the Forum’s fifth anniversary. For Part Two, members were asked to select favourites from among their own collections of writing on the Forum. In Part Three, the book’s editors have offered their own, necessarily brief selection of exemplary pieces selected from the Forum’s great diversity. Finally, Part Four collects some of the stand-out examples of creative dialogues that have emerged between the Forum’ s members.

For both of these anniversary publications, thanks are due to Darrell Barnes, who has edited them with great skill and attention. We hope you enjoy perusing this volume and that it captures at least part of the wonderful talent, dedication, and camaraderie which exist on our Forum.

Floreat Aula!

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Part One

Pieces written for the Fifth Anniversary

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