We wish to inform you of a change to Words and Women. Sadly, we have decided to put the organisation on hold for the next twelve to eighteen months.

Words and Women has achieved much over seven years:

· We have published 6 books or to put it another way 147 women writers

· We have distributed £30,000 of prize monies and commissions

· We have raised money for the charities Leeway, Women for Refugee Women and ECPAT (against child-trafficking)

· We have put on 7 International Women’s Day events, a garden festival and numerous other reading events around the East of England. These events often involved cross-discipline work with female theatre directors, comedians, film makers, musicians and artists, including Karen Reilly from The Neutrinos, Chalk Circle Theatre Company, Print to The People, Clare Jarrett, Anna Mudeka, Louisa Theobald

· We have presented a paper at Lit Com: Writing and Communities, we’ve made a short film and have spoken about our work on T.V. and radio

· We have developed work for the stage and the page with our Arts Council supported project About, and we have worked with young girls in schools, and with over 30 women writers from disadvantaged areas in Norfolk for our Libraries supported project Rural Writes

· Writers we have worked with have gone on to publish their first novels and collections of stories. We are proud of them but particularly proud of two women from our Rural Writes project who were new to writing then and are now studying writing at postgraduate level

We have also been:

· Shortlisted for Best Anthology 2014, Saboteur Awards

· Shortlisted for Best One-Off Event 2015, Saboteur Awards

· Shortlisted for the Women in Publishing New Venture Award 2015 & 2016

However, Words And Women is run voluntarily; it’s basically a two-woman gig and neither of us get paid for our time. Last year, we engaged in an operation to see how we could make the organisation more sustainable for us. But, as of yet, we’ve not found a way to secure funding.  It is frustrating that core funding for activities like ours is so difficult, if not impossible to achieve.

So we need time away to do more thinking and planning and to recoup. Hopefully we will find a way to continue because it still feels as if Words and Women has a role to play in supporting and celebrating women writers and other women creatives, in creating opportunities on a community and professional level, in trying to offer women a voice and public space.

Thank you for being with us over the years. We will be celebrating the centenary of partial suffrage of women with some small but not insignificant projects (again please see the dedicated page on our blog for further details), and we will be holding our last reading for the time being on the 3rd May in Ipswich for the Suffolk Book League, featuring work by the poet Lois Williams, so if you are in the area then please come along to that.

If you would like to purchase copies of the books then please see the dedicated page on our blog www.wordsandwomennorwich.blogspot.co.uk. The books cost £12 each, plus p&p.

Kindest regards,

Belona Greenwood and Lynne Bryan