We're delighted that international best-selling author Alex Preston, a former alumni of Sompting Abbotts, will be helping pupils give their writing skills a boost when he presents his Creative Writing Workshop to the pupils of Year 7/8. Alex is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Kent, based at their Paris campus. His first novel, This Bleeding City, was published by Faber and Faber in March 2010. The novel won the Spear's Best First Novel Prize, the Edinburgh International Book Festival Readers' First Book Award, and was chosen as one of Waterstone's New Voices 2010. It has been translated into 12 languages. His second novel, The Revelations, was published in February 2012, while his third, In Love and War, was featured on BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime. His fourth, As Kingfishers Catch Fire, met with critical acclaim and was described by The Guardian as "a sumptuous labour of love". and nominated one of The Guardian Best Books of 2017. You can read more about Alex Preston here.