Arts @ Banbury St Mary held another local 'Meet the Author' session on Monday evening with award-winning authors, Jane Rogers https://www.janerogers.info/ and Linda Newbery https://www.lindanewbery.co.uk/ . Both have written prolifically on a variety of topics, and both wanted to be writers from a young age. 

Linda became an English teacher and initially wrote for younger readers, before extending her writing to novels and non-fiction, with a particular focus on compassionate living and the life-style choices we all make. Her work 'This Book is Cruelty Free - Animals and Us' was published in 2021 and considers how our everyday decisions about food, fashion, entertainment and other lifestyle choices affect animals, wildlife and the environment. Linda read aloud the introduction of this book to the audience, and then led a discussion on the importance of raising awareness among the wider population of the on-going need to address the world's climate change emergency. 

Jane also always wanted to be a writer. She trained as an English teacher, but has primarily worked as an author and lecturer in writing. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Jane had her first short stories published in the early 1980s and she went on to write for radio and television, as well as crafting short stories and over ten novels. She read aloud one of her short stories, 'The Road' from the short story collection, 'Hitting Trees with Sticks'. Part of the evening's discussion centred on the skill required for crafting short stories, and the need to keep focused on the essential elements of the story. 

Both authors are committed to campaigning for environmental change, and they explained their motivation for pursuing social, climate and animal justice. Writing books has been a way of exploring their ideas and presenting the arguments to a wider audience. Linda's advice to aspiring authors is 'Don't get it right - get it written!' and encouraged any budding author to make a start on writing. Jane advised aspiring writers to write about what interests them rather than what they think would be a best-seller for the public. 

We thoroughly enjoyed hearing about Jane and Linda's writing careers, and we are very grateful to them for taking the time to talk to us about the joys and challenges of being an author.