Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, its been a long time coming, but everything is now in place for the handover of Birmingham Words to its shiny, new management team at the National Academy of Writing. On Monday 12th May, I'll be catching the bus to Perry Barr to spend an afternoon with students from Birmingham City University and the Academy, where I will be inducting them into the mysteries of how the site works behind the scences. From that point onwards, the new team will be taking hold of the reins, and Birmingham Words will start to move in new and exciting directions.  There will be a formal announcement of the changes shortly afterwards. Thanks for all of your patience! And, in the meantime, don't adjust your sets. 

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Hello, folks,

Updates have been a bit slow here over the past month, and so I thought I'd write to let you know what is happening. Now - after a fair bit of negotiation and a lot of digging into the bowels of the Birmingham Words database to sort out a few outstanding technical issues - everything is in place for the transition period to the site being administered by the National Academy of Writing / Birmingham City University, and I am meeting in the coming week to discuss the finer points of this.  All being well, formal ownership of the site and domain should be transferred soon after.

After this, there will be a period of transition when the new team will be taking over the management of the site, and I'll be showing them the ropes. When they are up and running, there will be an announcement introducing you to the new site administrators and letting you know where things are heading next. 

It's an exciting time here at Birmingham Words, but please bear with us if things seem a little slow during the transitional period. 

All the best,

Will

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It is with great sadness that I heard last night of the death of Roi Kwabena. Roi was one of those people who defied all attempts at classification: cultural activist, poet, poet laureate of Birmingham in 2001-2002, anthropologist, historian, publisher, campaigner against racism and former senator in the parliament of Trindad and Tobago. As an artist, Roi was entirely unclassifable, defying convention and expectation, but doing so with an unusual warmth and grace.

I will remember with fondness my few dealings with Roi: his occasional but always enthusiastic emails about the literature projects he was involved in; his making of offerings to the ancestors in the middle of Birmingham public library before introducing a reading by a visiting Afghan poet; his enormous personal warmth and ability to draw other people together; and his seemingly unshakable belief in the greatness of ordinary human folk. 

Thank you Roi. You will be missed. 

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Congratulations, once again, to Catherine O'Flynn whose What Was Lost has scooped the Costa prize for best first novel. Catherine's book was launched by local literary press Tindal Street back in early 2007, and has been hoovering up the accolades ever since. See the article on the Guardian website for the full story. Also up for Costa prizes are Jean Sprackland for poetry, AL Kennedy for best novel, Simon Sebag Montefiore for best biography and Ann Kelly for best children's book.

The overall winner will be announced on 22nd January. Lots of fingers will be crossed for Catherine here in Birmingham. We'll keep you posted.

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Happy New Year to all our visitors, members and friends. 2008 promises to be an exciting year here at Birmingham Words, with some big changes planned. We'll be keeping you posted through January and February about developments.

 In the meantime, we'd like to wish you literature lovers and word spinners a rich and fulfilling 2008.

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Yes, it's that time again! So a very happy Christmas to all Birmingham Words visitors and members!

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Thanks to everyone who got in touch with ideas, comments and good wishes relating to the planned change-over of managment of Birmingham Words. The general consensus seems that people are happy with the proposed changes, so we'll be going ahead with the plan to transfer management and hosting of the site over the the National Academy of Writing and Birmingham City University respectively. This will take place over a good couple of months, so I'll keep you in touch with how things are shaping up.

Meanwhile, in the past few weeks I have been making a few changes behind the scenes to get the site ready for the transfer. The publication sub-site has now been re-integrated into the site as a whole, which is tidier, so if you want to download our publications, you can do so by clicking on the top menu, and downloading directly from the page. I've also been doing lots of tidying up of the database, which is the electronic equivalent of Hercules in the Augean Stables, and now things in that department are looking a bit more sweet-smelling. Apologies - once again - for any disruption to normal service!

For the time being, however, I'm going to go and have a mince pie or two to celebrate the festive season...

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The problem with logging in has now been fixed. Sorry once again for any inconvenience caused.

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