John Hemming MP has launched the "Big Ask" to find the region's top novelists and poets.

10.40.00am GMT Tue 8th Nov 2005

John Hemming has launched the "Big Ask" to find the region's top novelists and poets. "Our historical consultant, Carl Chinn," he said, " has been working to produce a provisional long list of authors and poets to which a couple of names have been added by others. We are now asking people to tell us names that we have missed out from the region. The deadline for this is 11th December 2005. Once we have a complete list we will be consulting the region to find out who are the top writers. There will be two lists. One list will be contemporary writers and the other one will be historic writers."

[see comments as below]

"Any suggested names should be sent to your local [newspaper/radio station] (insert your own media name here if you wish) who will pass them on to the wall of fame headquarters."

[or]

"Any suggested names should be sent to John Hemming MP at the House of Commons."

[or]

"Any suggested names should be sent to John Hemming at Birmingham City Council."

[or]

"Any suggested names should be sent to The Regional Wall of Fame at 78 Alcester Road, Birmingham B13 8BB."

"Once we have the results of the consultation the first exhibit in the wall of fame will be unveiled at City Plaza. In future months we will be dealing with other subjects including Drama, Light Entertainment/Comedy, Science, Medicine, Literature, Industrialist, Academia, Sportsperson, Music (not Jazz, not Classical), Jazz Music, Classical Music, Best Contribution to Community, Top Regional Media Personality and Politics."

"I would like to take this opportunity to thank City Plaza for agreeing to host the exhibits. It is important that we celebrate the longstanding successes of the region."

ENDS

Note for Editors

In terms of generating the full longlist you can either encourage your readers/listeners to write to me or to write to you and then you can pass names to me.

We will be sending out more details of the entries on the list at a later stage. On this occasion we are taking a little longer to handle a topic because this is the first topic. In future months it will be 3 weeks of longlisting, then a shortlist on which the phone poll will identify the list.

If you are running a radio programme where listeners phone up and suggest names please keep a list of those names and pass them to us.

Please copy emails to me and also to hendricks@fortuneandglory.co.uk (Ernie Hendricks)

We are collating a short note about each of the writers which will be circulated later.

Provisional list of writers:

William Shakespeare

J. R. R. Tolkien

D. H. Lawrence

Philip Larkin (Warwickshire poet)

Wilfred Owen (poet killed 1918)

Walter Brierley (Means Test Man Derbyshire)

Walter Allen (All in a Lifetime, born Aston)

John Hampson (Birmingham inter-wars novelist)

Edith Pargeter (novelist Shropshire)

William Shenstone (Halesowen Poet)

Meera Syall (contemporary novelist)

Henry Treece (historical novelists for children. Wednesbury)

P. G. Wodehouse (Shropshire)

Stanley Weyman (Shropshire historical romance novels)

Izaak Walton (fishing)

Sir Philip Sidney (16th century poet)

David Christie Murray (Cap O' Nails West Bromwich)

Washington Irving (wrote Rip Van Winkle in Brum)

Francis Brett Young (novelist Halesowen)

Jerome K. Jerome (Walsall)

A. E. Houseman

William Langland (Medieval. The Vision of Piers Plowman)

Arnold Bennett

David Lodge(contemporary novelist

Jonathan Coe(contemporary novelist

Jim Crace (contemporary novelist

Rupert Brooke (Rugby)

Judith Cutler (crime)

Elizabeth Brett

Roshan Doug (contemporary poet)

Roi Kwabena (contemporary poet)

Benjamin Zephaniah (contemporary poet)

David Edgar (playwright)

George Eliot (19th century novelist Nuneaton)

John Farnol (hence Farnol Road Yardley romantic fiction)

Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (19th century novelist Wolverhampton)

William Hazlitt (critic and essayist)

Meg Hutchinson (contemporary romantic fiction Black Country)

Kathleen Dayus (Birmingham working class)

William Hutton (history of Brum etc)

Catherine Hutton (William's daughter and well known writer herself)

Mary Webb (Shropshire)

Hasrat Sultan Bahu poetry lives in Sparkhill through his trust