Sunday 18 April 2010

Fish One-Page Prize, and Beautiful Blogging

First, many thanks to Jen at Writer in the Wilderness, who nominated this blog for a Beautiful Blogger Award. I'll attempt seven interesting facts about myself after sharing the jolly news that my two entries to the Fish One-Page Prize have both been shortlisted. And I almost didn't enter anything for this prize this year! Results on 30 April, yikes, but I'm happy just to have got this far. Now for the interesting facts...

1. Circa 1975, my school was on TV in a children's pop show hosted by Ed "Stewpot" Stewart called 'Give us a song' or something like that. My one and only TV appearance.

2. I hail from the part of Northern England where Alan Garner wrote his stories of wizards, which is now over-run by WAGs.

3. Linked to fact #2, at the age of six, I ran away from home for half a day with my older brother, to one of the old caves inhabited in Garner's stories by wizards. I spent some time sheltering in a cave during a thunderstorm while my brother 'foraged for food'. The rain put us off, however, and we trudged home with our tails between our legs.

4. My Great-Great-Grandfather worked in India and vanity-published a book of poetry, which I look at from time to time, wondering about my writerly heritage. It is possibly the reason I have never tried my hand at poetry.

5. Linked to fact #3, several of my Great-Great-Aunts were half-Indian and I have distant relatives living in India today.

6. I worked for a short while at ELLE magazine when Sally Brampton was Editor.

7. I've been on a nuclear submarine, and once spent the night in Prince Andrew's room.

I'm nominating the following for a Beautiful Blogger Award:

Gay Degani Words in Place
black white bliss
Wild Writing the Edge

6 comments:

Tania Hershman said...

Huge congratulations on the Fish double shortlisting! Saw your name there and was very delighted... and great facts, you beautiful blogger. We all need our one and only TV appearance... if you could weave all of these into a story...?!

Sarah Hilary said...

Thanks, Tania! The Fish shortlisting was a lovely surprise, I must admit. One of my entries was the science flash you read..!

Madeline Mora-Summonte said...

Congratulations on making the shortlist, Sarah! And on the award.

Love that cave story!

Sarah Hilary said...

Thanks, Madeline. If you're interested in reading more about the cave adventure, it was published in The Ranfurly Review as "What we did at half-term":

http://www.ranfurly-review.co.uk/home.html

Downloads as a pdf, issue 10. I think my sory is on page 8.

Jenzarina said...

Fish double shortlist! HUGE congratulations :)

Sarah Hilary said...

Thanks, Jen!