Phoenix Writers – a short introduction 

The Phoenix Writers’ Group has been running since Easter 2008 in its current home at the Horwich Resource Centre on Beaumont Road. Before that, the group met in a variety of venues, including its original starting point the Thyme Café in Horwich.

The group has maintained a weekly meeting ever since, with members of the group taking turns to research and provide information or instruction on a particular topic of their choice: this can range from ‘how to write a successful sonnet’ to ‘how to make your characters real’; it can go from ‘writing for children’ to ‘writing a story in 50 words’. During 2011 we began to put together an anthology of some of our work – short stories and poems – which was published in the early part of 2012. 

We sometimes take ourselves away from the Centre and go looking for inspiration locally. We have visited Bolton museum and art gallery, Bolton market and the Christmas market in Manchester; we’ve walked around the ruins of Liverpool Castle at Angelzarke soaking up the atmosphere; and we’ve wandered the streets of Horwich on a sort of treasure hunt, looking for items that could belong to our invented characters and so create their personalities. We’ve discovered you can write anywhere, anytime: you don’t have to wander lonely as a cloud or live in the shed with paper and pen!