I went up to London yesterday, for a CWIG committee meeting, to hammer out the CWIG New Visions Conference in Bath on the 5th and 6th of September this year.

What is CWIG? You may well ask. It stands for Children’s Writer’s and Illustrator’s Group,  a subsection of the Society of Authors. I’m currently sitting on the committee – for the second time in fact.

Jo, our wonderful Secretary was slightly worried that the conference was not that far away and we hadn’t really got it nailed down yet, so we had a special meeting and managed to do just that.

We had quite a lot of possibilities to play with and past experience to play with – I’d been on the committee for two conferences before. Costs seem to spiral each year, so keeping the price down was an issue, as was trying to get a little something in for everyone.

The term children’s writer covers a multitude of genres and ages, from baby books to Young Adult – from fact books to joke books to picture books to chapter books to novels to study guides and text books.

Writer’s work in a bit of a bubble and can come to think that what they do, and the age group they write for, defines children’s writing.

We’d came up with a load of names that we thought would be great speakers and most of them, naturally, are busy or already booked. But I think we did a great job yesterday coming up with a mix of interesting, informative, entertaining and thought provoking sessions with a wonderful array of speakers.

If you are a children’s writer, or are interested in writing for children, make sure you have Bath – 5-6th September marked down in your diary!

More info to follow soon!