Published March 13, 2024
On Monday 11th March 2024, a group of pupils from all year groups visited Wyvern St Edmunds school for a talk from Ravena Guron, author of YA murder mysteries This Book Kills and Catch Your Death.
This visit marked the end of this year’s Salisbury Schools’ Book Awards, an annual local reading challenge created to encourage and inspire pupils of all ages to read a shortlist of books they might not usually pick up.
Readers from several Salisbury secondary schools aim to read six books over a few months, and vote on their favourite. The winner is then announced at an event hosted at a different school each year in which one of the shortlisted authors visits to give a talk. This year’s winner happened to be the visiting author, Ravena Guron!
In her talk, Ravena talked about her career so far, from attending law school to becoming an entertainment lawyer while writing books on the side. She then discussed her process for writing a murder mystery novel, and it was really interesting to see how many drafts she writes before anyone – even her editor – gets to read it.
Our pupils came away feeling inspired to work on their own stories, with a couple of people from Year 7 already having fully fleshed out novel ideas before we even got back to school!
We’re very proud of you all for representing St Joseph’s so well. A big thank you to all involved, and a special well done to those who managed to read all of the shortlisted books.
Thank you to WSE for hosting this year’s awards and for organising such a great author visit!