Literature - Short Fuse Literary Club

Being a writer can be something of a solitary life. Brighton-based Polly Tuckett and Tara Gould decided to do something about it. “Both writers ourselves, Tara and I had the sense of writing in a vacuum and realised that whilst poets get to read at spoken word events and share their work on a fairly regular basis the same was not true of short story writers”, says Polly. Tara agrees. “Whilst there are lots of ‘performance’ poetry and open mic events, there are very few opportunities for people to present or hear quality writing”, she tells me. With these points in mind, Tara and Polly decided to set up a monthly literary club in order to address just these issues. They started the first ones in Brighton’s Komedia and this week sees the launch of the debut Lewes version. “We aim to provide a fun and stimulating evening’s entertainment in a totally unpretentious manner”, says Polly. “And hope that as diverse an audience as possible will enjoy the story-telling”.
Polly and Tara are hoping to be able to draw writers from the local community and are calling for all Lewes-based writers to send in their work. “We are looking for well-crafted, brave writing”, says Tara. “We primarily ask for fiction but we have on occasion selected autobiographical tales because they have been particularly truthful, piquant and interesting.” It’s absolutely not about being able to perform, though, Tara assures me “We choose blind." “And”, she adds. “It’s all very unstuffy, it’s fine to be nervous.” ER