Category Archives: Write for Growth

Encountering Animals at Frodsham

By juliamcg | Published: April 21, 2018

Animal Encounters was our theme for April’s Write for Growth at Castle Park Arts Centre, amid the stimulus of the annual exhibition of the Association of Animal Artists This year’s exhibition is even more inspirational than last year, incorporating categories from Power and Pace of Life to Fragile World and Windows to the Soul. It’s […]

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Writing Round the Compass

By juliamcg | Published: July 27, 2016

You can get lost anywhere it seems – in a forest, up a hill, in an airport, a French village or, of course, an actual maze. As we swapped notes at Saturday’s Write for Growth Workshop, each of us had experiences to recount. Busy modern life urges us to look to the clock rather than […]

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Writing about Food

By juliamcg | Published: May 23, 2016

It felt like a meeting of the Slow Food movement: the room’s quiet settledness as the group sat round a large wooden table exploring their chosen fruit – apple, banana, orange, grapes – through each sense in turn, culminating in an attentive tasting and eating. We were at Gladstone’s Library for the latest Write for […]

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Savouring the Senses

By juliamcg | Published: December 13, 2015

Behind a shop counter down our way this week-end an animated discussion was going on. ‘What’s the smell of Christmas?’ Customers and check-out staff all had their ideas: Cloves, spices, oranges, mulled wine, turkey and the fresh evergreen of a Christmas tree. Smell was one sense we explored at Saturday’s Write for Growth at Gladstone’s […]

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Writing in Colour

By juliamcg | Published: July 30, 2015

Pixie Green, Ruby Starlet and Wild Primrose. What if these Dulux shades came to life as people? What might their personality, behaviour and style be? We explored these questions at Write for Growth’s July workshop at Gladstone’s Library on Writing with Colour. Comparing notes on our imagined character sketches brought out some matching colour connectlons. […]

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Playing with Frames in Frodsham

By juliamcg | Published: June 10, 2015

Outside, the sound of children playing; downstairs, a clatter of coffee-cups and the steamy roar of a cappuccino machine, but in the room, no noise beyond the rustle of paper and an occasional sigh: Saturday morning’s Write for Growth workshop was fully engrossed in our first activity, a free-writing exercise. We sat round a large […]

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  • About Julia

    Julia

    From writing stories for my younger brother, to penning poems for the School Magazine and filling a growing pile of personal journals, the written word has always been part of my life’s journey.

    I started out as an English Teacher and subsequently retrained as a Counsellor. I have counselled in a GP Surgery and worked with various Employee Assistance Schemes and Charitable Trusts alongside seeing private clients.

    Although I have done some freelance journalism and written four non-fiction books, creative writing has become my main focus in recent years.

    My poems have appeared online on sites including Amaryllis, Silver Birch Press, Clear Poetry, Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis, Riggwelter and Ink,Sweat and Tears. I have been published in Curlew and Bucks Mill Magazine, and anthologised in Our Hearts Still Sing. My first poetry collection, Chester City Walls, came out in 2015.

    Read more about Julia

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