City of Literature - Update

Norwich skyline from Mousehold Heath

A while ago I blogged about Norwich's bid to become England's first UNESCO City of Literature. In case you missed the anouncement, it was confirmed on 10 May that the bid was successful: see here for what UNESCO say about it. At the time, I was rather pre-occupied with the Blogathon so I didn't get round to posting an update.

While largely agreeing with him, I was amused by this part of Sam Jordison's post on the Guardian Book Blog:

"On a more personal note, I can vouch for the fact that Norwich is a good place for writers. (...) [T]here's also a thriving community of writers and journalists living here. When I made the move, I thought I was a pioneer, but it turns out I was just enacting a cliche. Half my neighbours seem to have a novel in the pipeline, a newspaper column, a job in publishing, an eccentric authorial uncle ..."

Clearly he lives in the Golden Triangle - I can't imagine quite so many writers in our neck of the woods.

For more information on what this all actually means, see the Writers' Centre Norwich website. I'm already looking forward to the International Centre for Writing though - it sounds lovely, even if it is at least 3 years away...


Photo by soapbeard, used under Attribution License