Young authorsmake a mark

This is the fifth in a series of books aimed at encouraging students between the ages of ten and fifteen to pick up a pen and write, with the aim ultimately of seeing their work published.

A number of students who attend the club, held each Wednesday evening at school, have gone on to publish their own works, which are now available on the Internet in paperback, hardback and as downloads.

Writer and schoolmaster, Mr. Cassidy, leads the club, and fosters in each of his writing students a love of the written word. “One of my young students had a definite flair for writing and a love of Formula One,” he said, “so I suggested some years ago, when he was thirteen years of age, that he combine the two interests and become a sports writer, and although he is now studying English at University College, London, he still finds time to report on Formula One for NBC, who fly him around the world for that purpose.”

Another former Buckswood student, and member of Authors Club, Jamie Osborn, now at Cambridge University, published a book of short stories when he was just fourteen years of age, and has recently won a major poetry prize. Jamie is poetry editor for the international arts and literary magazine The Missing Slate, and is working on a sequence of poems based on his experiences as a gap-year teacher in Namibia. His work was featured in The Mays Anthology 2014.

“It’s a great thrill for the Buckswood juniors to see their work in print,” said Headmaster, Mr. Sutton, “and it is often the catalyst to greater achievements within the literary world, as we have seen from the number of Buckswood students who have already published their work.”