Last night was the inaugural event of our new Picture Book Club South West (#picturebookclubSW), a book club for adults  who like picture books, whether they are teachers, writers, illustrators, bloggers, parents or just simply picture book enthusiasts!

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I first chatted to Emma from My Book Corner and Greet from Book Island a few months ago about starting the club, but the original idea is not mine: Fiona Barker runs Picture Book Club in Berkshire and her tweets about the club planted a seed in my head about starting something in this part of the world.  Fiona has recently written about her experience of starting the club on the FCBG blog which you can read here.

We were delighted to welcome Bristol-based picturebook maker Yasmeen Ismail as our first ever guest speaker; Yasmeen spoke about her road to publishing and how she works and had many a hilarious anecdote to share with us.

 


It was an joyous, entertaining and informative event and it was fabulous to meet other local picture book enthusiasts! Thank you to Yasmeen for agreeing to be our first speaker, and to everyone who attended; I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.  Look at those amazing raffle prizes too!

 

Thank you also to all the wonderful team at Foyles Bristol for being our hosts and for their patience and to Bloomsbury Children’s Books and Laurence King Publishers for donating raffle prizes.

We very much look forward to our next event, and hope to see you there. Details will be coming soon!