At Fairford Festival Book Fest 2023, a young Farmor’s School media student, Isla Beadnell, accepted my invite to interview a Bafta-nominated children’s writer, Emma Reeves. She had never done anything like it before and absolutely smashed it!

Despite me offering to help her with deciding on which questions to ask, she did it all by herself, asked appropriate questions, kept the audience interested and, most importantly, kept to the time allowed!

Now Isla is hoping to become a journalist and so asked my advice on how to start. I phoned a couple of my contacts, one being Fiona Scott of Fiona Scott Media, who has kindly offered Isla a couple of weeks work experience with her in her office in Swindon. What Fiona doesn’t know about the media and journalism is not worth knowing, so I know Isla will learn so much from her work experience with Fiona.

The second person I contacted was the local editor of the Wilts & Glos Standard and he suggested that Isla send in around 200 words about anything she wanted. I suggested she write about her experience interviewing a celebrated writer at last year’s Book Fest and this is the result!

I can see that Isla has exactly what it takes to be a top journalist – not just the creative writing abilities but also initiative and the enthusiasm and drive to be a good journalist.

Read Isla’s article here: https://www.wiltsglosstandard.co.uk/news/24508309.student-interviews-bafta-nominated-writer-emma-reeves/