Local author Clare Owen, in conversation with illustrator Sally Atkins

About

Please note: this event will be outdoors and will be in accordance with all current corona virus restrictions.

How to Book: Please email shrew@shrewbooks.com to book your place

Fowey author, Clare Owen, published her debut novel in April 2021. Published by Arachne Press, and aimed at 12-14 year old readers, Zed and the Cormorants tells the story of a young girl who moves from London to a hamlet on a Cornish estuary and becomes convinced that she’s at war a flock of cormorants living in the woods near her home. Much of the book takes places in a fictionalised Fowey.

Clare Owen was an actor before she was a writer and her physical approach to developing the characters for her books has strong roots in the rehearsal room – finding the right shoes or the contents of a bag, or improvising scenes just with dialogue, before putting pen to paper. When she collaborated with illustrator Sally Atkins on Zed and the Cormorants, Clare asked her not just to illustrate a story, but to ‘wear a character’s hands’.

In this conversation Clare and Sally will share their notebooks, sketches, and extracts from the novel, and discuss new ways of making characters spring from the page.

This would be a lovely event for parents to attend with teens, and for anyone who is interested in literature, art and illustration or Cornish natural history.

This event is organised by Shrew Books, Fowey in celebration of Independent Bookshop Week 2021.