New radio plays to celebrate Adrian Moles 50th birthday

Budding writers are being called upon to help celebrate literary character Adrian Mole's 50th birthday.

Our Centre for New Writing is commissioning three five-minute radio plays or monologues to perform at Adrian Mole's birthday party, hosted by Literary Leicester on April 2 in partnership with publishers, Penguin.

Two commissions are open to all writers and the third is aimed at young writers aged between 16-25. They can take inspiration from any aspect of Mole's diaries or any other theme from the writing of author Sue Townsend.

Dr Corinne Fowler, director of the Centre for New Writing, said the commissions would be judged by a panel assembled by the Centre, who would look for originality and work that maintained a sense of the regional character within Adrian Mole.

Dr Fowler said: "The party and commissioned work seemed like the perfect way to celebrate Adrian Mole as a central cultural phenomenon. He is very much a Leicester figure and we want to remind everyone that Sue Townsend was a Leicester writer through and through with a regional sensibility. The birthday party will have the same spirit of playfulness that the novels had."

Sue Townsend kindly deposited her papers with the Special Collections in the University Library in 2005, and in 2008 she became a Distinguished Honorary Fellow, the highest honour that the University can bestow. She died at her home in Leicester on 10 April 2014.

To enter write a cover letter of no more than 400 words and submit a creative writing sample to Corinne Fowler at csf11@le.ac.uk by 12pm on January 16.

• Listen again to Dr Fowler's interview with BBC Radio Leicester (2h 44m 18s)
• Leicester Mercury article

• For more information email Dr Fowler or visit the website
• Further information about the Sue Townsend Archive at our University is available here