Notes From a Warm Place

So, the people who invited me to read in Southern & Northern California have been sending me very lovely comments from the audience members and, I have pulled them together into a 14-line collage in celebration. My trip so far as been incredibly reaffirming - if I ever doubted that readers just love literature and want to be challenged and exposed to new worlds, my doubts have been blown away... Here's the collage/bricolage/commentage:

The poem he read to us which paralleled playing
a piano with playing basketball). I thought it was both
thoughtful and creative. Not only was he an attractive writer,
but his poetry was amazing, the perfect

antidote to an otherwise grinding week. His reading draws me in
and paints pictures; the way that he speaks of togetherness,
in terms of "we" instead of "I" says a lot about his character.
He speaks with such rhythm. I loved Nii's reading;

definitely my favorite guest speaker. The way he read
his novel was almost as if he was singing a song.
I love the way he incorporated language in his book.
He has such a wonderful spirit; I thoroughly enjoyed hearing his work.

I'm just about to order his book from Amazon.
I wish he could come back and read to us again!

Voiceover East Africa Campaign

So, on Tuesday the 9th of August from 09:30 - 13:00 I'll be in a London studio donating my voice for a ground-breaking campaign to raise money to help alleviate the famine situation in East Africa (Maple Street Studio have kindly agreed to host the shoot, and produce the spot free of charge!). It's a social media campaign of 100 voice-over artists (and the wider voice-over community) working pro-bono voicing and producing 10 public service announcements for 10 aid-agencies assisting with crisis in East Africa where the worst drought in 60 years has seen famine declared in parts of Somalia and 11.3 million lives at risk across the 'Horn of Africa'

Why are we doing this? The UN estimates that $1.3 Billion is needed just to feed those at risk, this is minus real concerted efforts towards sustainability in the region. All the aid-agencies have a shortfall of funding and we see that mainstream News does not report the issue enough (although the situation has been building up for years), so our aim is to bring more attention to the situation whilst fund-raising through the medium of communication; 10 Public Service announcements, audio and video made available across all social media (and Radio & TV where possible).

What next? In this shoot I'll be contributing specifically to a voiceover recording for The World Food Programme (WFP) - who are working right across the 'Horn of Africa' in  Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti... This is just the first of 10 recordings we are producing and the aim is to raise money while raising awareness so please donate any amount from £1 upwards by Texting VOEA52 followed by the amount in whole pounds e.g. VOEA52 £1 to 70070 & your specified donation will be sent to The World Food Programme. There are over 70 million mobile phones in the UK alone, that's more mobiles than the entire population! Now imagine what just £1.00 can do!

'Just Giving' are using the Voice-Over East Africa Campaign as a case study and are promoting our cause, filming us for a feature as we record the voice-over for The World Programme (WFP) spot(s). The end video is being produced by Just Giving and will be broadcast on their YouTube website, the World Food Programme website and the VOEastAfrica YouTube channel