Another day with hundreds more Spanish kids sitting (mostly) in rapt silence at an author talking for 45 minutes in English - twice! I do think that is amazing, and quite wonderful.  Beverley Naidoo talked them through her life as a fighter against apartheid, a fighter with words.  Using her seminal book, Journey to Joburg as a starting point, and with reference (from the kids!) to Out of Bounds (her collection of stories across the apartheid decades) Beverley used slides and anecdotes to explain the twisted racist system, and brought the story up to date with stories of children in prison in the present day.

As the day progressed it became clearer to me how these kinds of events could be planned for the future.  The trick is to make them self sustaining and applicable to a whole range of authors working with almost any group of English language students.  I think we have made some significant progress on being able to do this over the past few days.

Tomorrow is a day long workshop with teachers and BritLit, using materials based on stories by both Beverley and Melvin.  Both authors will be there for the second half of the day.  Should be interesting.

We're also launching a new kit tomorrow - based on Beverley's 'Journey to Jo'burg' - with Beverley reading one chapter,and recorded in Segovia! Watch out for it!