Fow17 In photos - and a shout out for Stories for Homes

Another brilliant year in York for the 8th Festival of Writing and I now have the distinction and pleasure of being one of only three people who have been to every single one.

As well as running the self-edit mini course, a Voice workshop ...

... chairing the literary genre panel ...

... chairing the final keynote address and doing two hours of Book Doctor sessions (this is the view from my Book Doctor desk) ...

 ... I devised a new workshop this year.

The idea for Facing the Fear came as a result of the responses to this blog post, where I had a conversation with the Doubt Demons. This photo is of people struggling to find the love for themselves.

And in this one, they're sharing that love with each other.

Tha gala dinner rocked, as ever. This will be the last year in which Mandy Berriman, my wonderful friend and mentee, is at the festie as an unpublished author. Her stunning novel, Home, will be published next February and I couldn't be more delighted and excited. John Taylor and I are two of the three people who have been to every FoW.

Lovely to share a table with literary lovelies, Deborah Install and Tor Udall, who were also both on the platform for the final keynote address. Both credit FoW for setting them on their journey to publication, having met their dream agent, Jenny Savill, at York

Massive congratulations to Sophie Snell, who won Friday Night Live, and Ruby Speechley, who won the Opening Chapter competition, as well as being runner up for Pitch Perfect. That's Ruby at the mike, with agent Sallyanne Sweeney, who judged the Opening Chapter comp, on the left.

And here's the traditional photo of Emma Darwin and yours truly, with our self-edit alumni who had made it to York. We keep adding new names to our Hall of Fame. Details of the next online self-edit courses will be appearing here.

While I'm here (and we all know how scarce I am on my blog these days) I want to talk briefly about Stories for Homes. Remember the amazing success we had last time, when we published our world-class anthology and raised over £3000 for Shelter? Well, we're doing it all again and this time the book is dedicated to the victims and survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire. I'm sure no one here needs to be reminded of how acute the housing crisis is in the UK and the causes of the tragedy, as well as the response since, highlight just how appalling life is for the most vulnerable people in our society. The fire happened three months ago and, at this point, there are still no firm figures for the number of people who died ('about 80') and only two families have been permanently re-housed.

This time, Sally Swingewood and I received 256 submissions for the anthology, which we had to whittle down to 55. Damn, but that was hard. So hard, in fact, we decided to also publish an online anthology, where people can read free stories on the theme of 'home'. The website has been spruced up, with tabs for Real Life stories and posts by a professional who works with homeless people, as well as the online stories and a donate button that goes direct to Shelter. Once again, producing an anthology at this standard has only been possible thanks to our wonderful SfH community, who have generously given their time and skills to create a world-class anthology.

The e-book is due to be launched on 28 September, with the paperback following in November. This is when we'll start to make serious money for Shelter. Please keep an eye on the news tab on the site. Meanwhile, we want to spread the word and get the hashtag #SfH2 trending. Please help us to make that happen by supporting our Thunderclap, as well as publicising (and buying!) the anthology.