The author Tamsin Winter visited Channing to run a creative writing workshop for Year 7 and talk to Year 8 about her books and career. She also had lunch with the pupil librarians. Tamsin spoke about her journey to becoming an author, which started with some mixed feedback from her primary school teacher on her work (‘This is nonsense!’). However, Tamsin persevered and went on to study Creative Writing at university and become an English teacher and after a lot of hard work (we saw the stacks of typescripts for Bad Influence) she finished her first novel, Being Miss Nobody. She has now published four books and a new one - I Dare You - will be published in May.

Tamsin spoke about her four novels, which feature girls in their early teens struggling with the ups and downs of school, relationships, social media and more. Tamsin’s protagonists show courage and determination to overcome their problems, and the books are full of empathy and humour.

In her creative writing workshop, Tamsin Winter gave pupils tips and prompts for creating a believable fictional world and an intriguing opening to a story. You can read some of their work here.

Tamsin also announced the winner of the Year 8 creative writing competition. Tamsin received many fantastic entries to the competition and it was really hard to choose a winner. However, congratulations to Violet in 8CC for her fantastic opening chapter, which you can read here.