On Monday, we were delighted to welcome Blackpool author Nathan Parker into school. Nathan is a self-published author who wrote The Granville Series of books (‘The Talking of Granville’, ‘The Rise of the Chemistry’ and ‘The Disappearance of Timothy Dawson’) as well as other short stories and poetry collections. Nathan talked to our Year 9s about how he started writing. He shared his background with them, explaining that he had been a Youth Worker which had given him inspiration for a lot of his work. The pupils were eager to find out more and asked intelligent and thoughtful questions. They were given the opportunity to read extracts from his books as well as a selection of his poetry.
Year 9 were then treated to a narrative writing masterclass. From the outset, the pupils were hooked. He encouraged them to make links to their own lives when thinking of setting and character. He modelled this using his own published work, by sharing some gripping extracts. He taught them how to structure a short story and talked through an example using some of the pupils as characters in the story! The session was interactive and engaging, and the pupils left with some great tips.
One pupil said, “Nathan was great. He made it really good fun and I learnt loads. I’m going to ask my mum tonight to get his poetry book!”
Many thanks to Nathan for giving us lots of food for thought and for inspiring our students to read more and to write their own stories.