Visit from Alis Hawkins

Alis Hawkins grew up on a dairy farm in Cardiganshire. Her inner introvert thought it would be a good idea to become a shepherd and, frankly, if she had, she might have been published sooner. As it was, three years reading English at Corpus Christi College, Oxford revealed an extrovert streak and a social conscience which saw her train as a Speech and Language Therapist. She has spent the subsequent three decades variously bringing up two sons, working with children and young people on the autism spectrum and writing fiction, non-fiction and plays. She writes the kind of books she likes to read: character-driven historical crime and mystery fiction with what might be called literary production values.

She kindly paid a zoom visit to Slough Writers and there was a lively discussion about writing, how difficult it is to make a living, and what drives us on. You can find Alis on Twitter @Alis_Hawkins

You can watch the video of her time with the writers here: VIDEO (apologies - it’s too long to embed in the site, so you’d have to download it, and it’s 1Gb, so be warned!)

Despite being almost a throwback to The Dark Times, the Slough Writers very much enjoyed the discussions with Alis, and her insights into the publishing world. And no one started throwing darts, which is a win.