Our latest submission to the 2019 Authors Showcase is another great piece of poetry from Syd Blackwell.

As background he explains, 'In 2002, my parents were retired in Rossland, BC (Canada), and I was an innkeeper in Revelstoke, BC, approximately 300 kilometers or four hours drive north.'

Enjoy Syd's contribution THE TRAVELLING HOME TRILOGY here.

It is a pleasure to feature this latest contribution in our 2019 Authors Showcase from Dolores Banerd.

Enjoy her story Snake in the Grass here.

A warm welcome to Val Vassay with her first contribution to our 2019 Authors Showcase.

Enjoy Val's memorable life experience CHARLIE GOES CAMPING  here.

Val Vassay

​I was born and brought up in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland, but have been fortunate enough since the age of 19 to spend most of my life in hotter climes. After spending 27 years in Bahrain where I produced two sons and was a secretary for many years before eventually turning my hand to English Language Teaching for Adults, my husband and I retired in December 2005 to beautiful Marbella, Andalucia, Spain. Since then I’ve spent most of my time relaxing by the pool, walking in the unspoilt countryside, reading, and writing with much help from the Writers’ Workshop section of Marbella U3A. So far I’ve had a couple of articles published (and paid for!) – one in the British women’s magazine “My Weekly” and the other in “Scottish Life”, a magazine published in the USA and Canada. I’ve also had several interviews and letters published in various magazines. I’m still writing and I’m hoping to have some of my short stories published soon through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), so watch this space! I also enjoy proofreading and may take this up more seriously at some stage – if it doesn’t seem like too much hard work, so watch this space also!

With the 2019 Authors Showcase nearing its final month, it is a pleasure to feature this fourth contribution from Helen Bing.

Enjoy reading Helen's latest memorable life experience The New Deaf Unit here.

Helen Bing

In another life I taught New Entrants, those wee things who are just starting school aged 5.  In New Zealand, our children can start on their 5th birthday.  They drift in and slot into the daily routines of the class.  We also had a close relationship with the School for the Deaf next door.  This story focuses on the new unit that was built for the deaf children in our school.  I have based it around the song Te Aroha, a short song often used for formal occasions such as the opening of new buildings.

Here are the words.  If anybody would like to hear it sung, check it out on YouTube.​

Te aroha
Te whakapono.
Me te rangimarie
Tatou, tatou e.
​

A warm welcome back to Ronald Mackay with his fifth contribution to the 2019 Authors Showcase.

Read and enjoy Ronald's latest memorable life experience Pâtisserie Tomaž here.

Ronald Mackay

​For more than a decade, Ronald Mackay combined farming close to Toronto in Ontario with teaching undergraduate and graduate students at a university in Montreal in the province of Quebec some 500 kilometers apart. He travelled between these two locations every week by train, spending four days in Montreal and three running a farm. For much of that time, he successfully chaired a large and fractious department made up of immodest and difficult people. He had learned, during many years working in Central Eastern and Europe, by noting its very absence, the importance of managing in a way that the broadest possible range of faculty members were willing to accept. During those years behind the Iron Country, he developed a great respect for the Central European intellectual and, since then, has too often – by his own admission -- made the mistake of assuming virtues in people where there are few or none. 

Ronald, in 1995, enjoying a whisky with a great Romanian intellectual and friend who still, despite all that life has thrown at him, possesses many virtues.

It is wonderful to be able to feature this fourth contribution from Tina Mattern in the 2019 Authors Showcase.

Enjoy Tina's latest memorable life experience GO-GO-ING GONE here.

A warm welcome back to James Robertson with his fourth contribution in the 2019 Authors Showcase.

I am sure you will enjoy his latest memorable life experience Birding in the Prom. You can read it here.​