On 8 June around 40 educational writers gathered in the congenial surroundings of the Foundling Museum for a day of professional talks.

The day consisted of educational talks by Hannah Tyreman, Tom O'Reilly and Cheryl Palin – taking a look at Continuous Professional Development for Teachers, a discussion around an educational app and what writers can learn from developing a product, and a reflection on the educational writing process.

Read the report here

Read the latest report from the outgoing EWG Chair, Anne Rooney, given at the most recent EWG AGM on 8 June 2019.

Chitra Soundar, Philippa Gardom Hulme and Sue Nicholson are standing for the EWG Committee from June 2019. Below are details of their experience and an overview of their careers.

If you are a member of the group and would like to stand, please contact Bryony Hall (bhall@societyofauthors.org) by 9 May.

Chitra Soundar is the author of over 40 books for children for trade and education, fiction and non-fiction. She is published worldwide by trade and educational publishers. Her educational publishers include Bloomsbury Education, Penguin Random House, Capstone Press, Asiapac Books Singapore, OUP Pakistan and Hong Kong & Badger Publishing. She visits schools across the world and is inspired to bring quality books to children in classrooms to inspire them to learn and to explore. Chitra has also worked as a programmer, a computer-science teacher and in senior management roles in multinational corporations. You can find out more at www.chitrasoundar.com.

Philippa Gardom Hulme’s writing has been her main work for the past 15 years. She has written secondary science student books, teaching guides, revision guides and workbooks for OUP, Collins, Pearson, York Press and CGP, for both UK and international markets. At the start of her authorial career, she happily accepted whatever the fee or royalties percentage on offer. Over time, she has learned to negotiate with publishers, including requesting higher advances, asking for royalties instead of fees (if projected sales are high) and telling publishers when she turns down projects because the remuneration is too low. Throughout, she has appreciated the support and resources of the SoA. She is now keen to share what she has learnt over the years to benefit fellow members of the Society, and would love to serve on the committee.

Sue Nicholson is former commissioning editor of an information/activity list at Kingfisher, and has written more than 80 books for children, for publishers including DK, Ladybird, Marshall Editions, Quarto and Warne. Titles range from writing first facts and devising educational and  ‘soft learning’ activity books for preschoolers to researching and writing factual books for older children. Areas of interest include history, cultural history, natural history, geography, pets and hobbies/games/crafts. She is also experienced at working with licensed character assets, including Angelina Ballerina, the Clangers, Disney, Hello Kitty, Peppa Pig and Mary Cicely Barker’s Flower Fairies. TV work includes writing stories appearing in the story corner segment of Driver Dan’s Story Train.

Group Stats

There are currently 875 members of the Educational Writers Group. Overall we gained 53 members and lost 44. The SoA’s current total membership is 10618, so EWG represents 8.25%.

EWG activities

The annual EWG seminar day was held on 9 June. Around 35 authors attended the day, which had parallel sessions, six speakers and plenty of opportunities to network. Several more authors joined the sessions via the live audio-stream. Topics included: the importance of textbooks, writing Graded Readers, generating income from online courses and the author-editor relationship. For a full report on the day, including details of the speakers, see committee member Mark Griffiths’ blog.

The EWG quarterly e-newsletter keeps members up to date with the Group’s activities and industry news. In the past year, many of the Group’s members have provided blogs on topics which are of particular interest to those working in this sector, and the regular interview slot has allowed members to gain an appreciation for the wider community of educational writers. If you would like to contribute to a future newsletter, please contact Bryony Hall.

The Group has a dedicated, private discussion page on Facebook, open only to those who are currently members of the SoA. To join, please click here.

Editorial Best Practice Award

The EWG award for Editorial Best Practice was launched this month. This new award allows members to publicly recognise those editors who have shown excellence in the way in which they have collaborated with their authors. For full details of the award, including how to nominate your editor, see here. 

Awards for Educational Writing

The shortlist for the 2018 ALCS Award for Educational Writing will be released in mid-November, with the winner to be announced at a ceremony at the House of Commons on 4 December. This award, now in its eleventh year, honours a work of traditionally published non-fiction that enhances learning.

This year, the prize of £2,000 will be awarded for an outstanding example of traditionally published non-fiction that enhances teaching and learning for the 11-18 age group. The 2018 judges are teacher Philip Arkinstall, writer Elspeth Graham, and school librarian Océane Toffoli.

We are grateful to the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society for their generous sponsorship.

Committee

Many thanks to all our committee members: Sarah Ackroyd, Chris Barker, Peter Clarke, Ignaty Dyakov, Terry Freedman, Mark Griffiths and Julie Pratten.

There will be three vacancies for the committee from next June. If you are interested in standing, please contact Bryony Hall for further information.

Anne Rooney, Chair of EWG

October 2018

Watch our 2016 Spring Seminar below: