Hello! We are Elane and Sarah, Co-Founders of I Am In Print, and Directors of the I Am Writing events brand. We’ve known each other since permed hair and Bananarama were a thing (the first time round) – when Sarah was forced to sit next to Elane at school and hasn’t been able to get rid of her since. You’ll get bonus points if you can tell which ones we are.
Backpacking around Australia, driving from Las Vegas to San Francisco and getting lost in Hong Kong are just some of the international adventures we’ve shared. Despite often living in different continents we have always managed to meet halfway and have run up many a phone bill. Didn’t we look young?
And though there isn’t a lot of photographic evidence, once upon a time, we even had a double wedding! Moving on…
In 2014 we set ourselves the challenge to co-write a book and spent many hours developing plots and characters. We had absolutely no idea what we were doing so headed off to a few writing events. Four years in, The Idea for I Am In Print bumped into us – build a community to unite all writers, The Idea shouted, so we did. We began with live broadcasts, gathering an audience from around the world to sit online in front of a published author and ask questions; secondly, #Agent121 was born, the first online service where agents offer feedback to writers, all year round! And then came the in-person courses and online publishing days.
As our reputation for facilitating fun writing events grew, we received an email late 2021 inviting us to take the infamous ‘Winchester Writers’ Festival’ under our umbrella. How hard can it be, we thought? Turns out, not as easy as we thought but our very small team of volunteers pulled us through… We had to change the name so rebranded it as the I Am Writing Festival. As well as an online element housing 11 talks, our in-person event hosted 5 keynote speakers, over 30 writing workshops and had over 300 live #Agent121 appointments over a sunny weekend in June 2022.
In May 2023, we took the I Am Writing Festival to Bristol and couldn’t be more grateful to all of the authors and tutors that brought their expertise, and to all of the delegates that made it such a fun and fabulous event.
Oh, and we are often asked about our book. Is it finished? is it published? I Am In Print is a full-time occupation for us while our children are at school, so unfortunately our magical middle grade adventure is still in a drawer, finished but in no way ready for anyone to read it. Every once in a while one of the characters taps us on the shoulder to remind us they are still waiting. So who knows, one day we might be able to say I Am In Print too? Meanwhile, we pass everything we’ve learned these past 4 years onto you. And we are proud to say that multiple representations within our writing community have been secured as a result of meetings we have facilitated.
