On Wednesday 5th June, Years 10 and 12 students at Aylesbury UTC had a real treat when award-winning author Anthony McGowan visited them.
Anthony had a great presence, and both students and staff were inspired by his love of writing. Year 10 students were captivated by his stories and chapter reading. The session with the Year 12 students was more Q&A style, and was very engaging.
He talked to the students about inspiration for their own writing, stimulating their creativity and enthusing them with the joy of reading. Each student was gifted a copy of one of Anthony’s books (The Knife That Killed Me), which he signed and dedicated, as a reminder of the experience.
The visit was part of a literacy project funded by the Merchant Taylors’ Foundation working with Authors Aloud UK, taking authors into schools in Southwark, Aylesbury, Wallingford and Londonderry. Their aim is that by meeting the authors, young people will be encouraged to increase their reading for pleasure and develop their creative writing skills.
Aylesbury UTC would like to thank the Merchant Taylors’ Foundation for funding this fantastic opportunity.
More About The Author
Anthony McGowan’s debut novel was an adult thriller, Stag Hunt, published to wide critical acclaim in 2004 with a sequel, Mortal Coil, out in 2005. His first novel for young adults, Hellbent (2005), was described by The Times as ‘a brilliantly nauseating thriller’ and followed in 2006 by Henry Tumour, a ‘boisterous, anarchic, frequently vulgar comedy about a boy with a brain tumour’, according to the Guardian, which won the 2006 Booktrust Teenage prize, the 2007 Catalyst Award, and was shortlisted for several other major awards. The Knife That Killed Me, was published in 2008. It deals in a hard-hitting, intensely realised way with the problems of knife crime and youth violence. The novel was filmed and released in July 2014.
His other titles include Hello Darkness, and the Brock/Pike/Rook/Lark quartet (The Truth of Things series). Lark won the CILIP Carnegie medal in 2020. The Art of Failing published by Oneworld in 2017 is a humorous account of the writer’s life. How to Teach Philosophy to Your Dog, an introduction to philosophy, was published in 2019. Dogs of the Deadlands published in 2022 was shortlisted for The Week Junior Book Awards.