Promoting Yorkshire Authors

 

2025 PYA Report from the Chair and Finance Report

Report from the Chair

2025 has been another interesting year for PYA as we grew our membership to nearly 450 from across Yorkshire and welcomed many new members to some of our book selling events.

We moved and upgraded our website this year and have made easier the administration of bookings for events where members can participate (like book fairs). Remember that the committee and subcommittee members are volunteers so it is important that you use the features provided to request participation and - if you can - not contact committee members directly. 

Our event programme can be found on our website and you'll need to sign-in to request participation if it's available or to go on the waiting list when fully booked.

Thanks to the generosity of the organisers, we were invited to attend the prestigious Harrogate Spring and Autumn Harrogate Flower Shows, at the Great Yorkshire Showground and Newby Hall respectively in 2025. We have also been invited to attend the events in 2026 and are grateful for the opportunity to tell everyone about our Community Group and sing the praises of our members.

PYA held two book fairs in the Ridings Centre in Wakefield and we've scheduled two for 2026 - in spring on 16th May and our Christmas book fair on 21st November (though this might change so keep an eye on the website).

Events like those above take much organising and we're grateful to our small team of organisers and helpers. The book fairs and flower shows wouldn't take place without them and ... you guessed ... we need more of our members to become active in PYA and shape its future.

We also held two Book Fairs at Claro Lounge in Ripon and one at Rudding Park near Harrogate. We're happy to support members who want to run their own book fairs and promote them through our usual channels but the number of PYA organised events is limited and must be deemed to be worthwhile by the PYA Events Organising Subcommittee. We have limited resources and we want book fairs to be a success for those participating.

We've continued our monthly ZOOM sessions and are grateful to Helen Johnson for hosting the evening and afternoon sessions of the monthly Writers' Support Group which helps us all improve our authoring with a ten minute writing exercise against a theme. You'd be surprised what can be achieved in ten minutes and the techniques that you learn in these sessions help you improve your writing skills.

The other monthly ZOOM session is hosted by Linda Jones and is the Children's Author Group. We've produced the anthology of children's stories and poems entitled I Want a Crocodile and Make it Snappy which will be published soon.

Expect more in 2026 and, if you haven't attended one of our ZOOM sessions please consider it. It's an efficient way of encouraging communication between our members from across the ancient Ridings of Yorkshire and we often have participants from as far apart as Hull, Doncaster and Thirsk - not something that would be possible face-to-face.

We linked up with the group "Books and Beverages" to hold a series of children's story and craft days at Knaresborough, Bilton and Harrogate Libraries in 2025 and have more arranged for Knaresborough in the coming year.

Finally, PYA were invited some time ago to link up with the writing group Thirsk Write Now (TWN) who meet by ZOOM every two weeks on a Tuesday at 7.30 pm during the year to read out a short story to a prepared theme. We've some regular attendees from PYA now so, if you are interested in attending, please let us know and TWN will add you to their distribution list to let you know of upcoming themes.

PYA Committee: The committee and subcommittees resign at each AGM and those who wish it can put themselves forward for re-election for a coming year (see agenda). We are also seeking new members for the committee to replace those standing down and to add to the experience of the committee and sub-committees.

Promoting Yorkshire Authors for the Future PYA-4F: The PYA-4F is our blueprint for the future and we've made some progress on some parts of the framework - but it is very much work in progress. We've a PYA Beta Readers Facebook Group (by invitation only) and the PYA Blog contains useful information to help our members succeed in a crowded marketplace made more difficult - and in some ways easier - by the advent of AI. Watch this space as PYA-4F gains traction.

Finance Report