Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2021 i Writing Magazine

In all my years writing these letters as my Last Job for the month, I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite as relieved as I am this month to be able to say Happy New Year. As usual for this first issue of the year, we’ve canvassed some of our industry insiders to offer lessons learned and tips and trends for 2021 (p6). We’ve all overcome some difficult challenges over the last twelve months but the book trade in general has weathered surprisingly well, with the promise of brighter times ahead, crammed with all the top releases that were postponed last year, and readers eager to restock their to-be-read piles. Plenty of opportunity for the canny writer who made the most of lockdown, whether that meant ploughing through a work-in-progress…

With a past as a probation officer and a partner who is an ex-murder detective, there is no question that Mari Hannah’s crime fiction bears the stamp of authenticity. But it also involves the kind of emotion you would expect in an epic romance. In her new novel, Without a Trace, her central character DCI Kate Daniels is involved in investigating a public crime that is also a personal tragedy when the love of her life, Jo, is on a flight from London to New York that disappears. ‘Kate is out of her depth, forcing her way into an investigation,’ says Mari. ‘I piled the pressure on her. But it’s about love and loss and never giving up.’ Readers of Without A Trace will be caught up as much in…

• Never query until you’re sure that you are submitting the best possible version of your story. This usually means that you’ve edited your manuscript several times and had people (outside of your very proud best friend and adoring mom) read and critique it – and that you’ve actually used that feedback to polish your work. • If you’re lucky enough to get a rejection from an agent or publisher and they’ve been gracious enough to also give you feedback on what didn’t quite work for them, pay attention to the feedback – it just might be the ticket to a representation and a publishing deal with the next agent you query. • Accept that everyone’s journey to publication may be different. Stay focused on your work and your path…

£250 TO BE WON Banish the memory of 2020 with this month’s competition, as we ask you for stories exploring the theme ‘new start’. The winner will receive £20 0 and publication in Writing Magazine, with £50 and publication online for the runner-up. The closing date is 15 March and entries should be 1,500-1,70 0 words. SEE P67 FOR ENTRY DETAILS, FULL RULES AND ENTRY FORMS £250 TO BE WON STILL TIME TO ENTER With its closing date of 15 February, there’s still time to enter last month’s competition for short stories on any theme. Prizes and length are as above.…

Hive Writers The Hive Creative Writers started in 2015 when Sana (our founder) couldn’t find a suitable group where she could share her writing and so decided to set up one herself, writes Stacey Harrison. ‘We have ten regular members, some of whom have been with the group since the start. All of us have developed into our own writer and the variety of genres, styles, and voices we have, makes us laugh, cry and even be shocked. We offer creative and supportive feedback to each other – judgemental and harsh is not in our remit. We are busy bees, fitting writing into our life schedules then grouping together once a month at the Hive library in Worcester. ‘The coronavirus stopped us from being able to meet in person but…

‘As we enter a new year we all doubtless look back on a very different kind of year from what we expected and wanted,’ writes Patrick Forsyth. ‘As one of Writing Magazine’s regular contributors, I’ve certainly used some of my lockdown time constructively. ‘With more time on my hands in March I set regular hours aside and got down to some writing. Having previously had two novels published (as well as travel books and other non-fiction), I created a new writing regime. The book, A Rather Curious Crime, is set in a small town and concerns a crime and a criminal with a young reporter getting involved and finding that nothing proves to be quite as it seems. ‘As lockdown took over, I quickly realised how much time I spent…

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Win a £1,000 prize for an 800-word story featuring a secret location in the Globe Soup Winter 2020 Flash Fiction Competition. Writers entering the competition will be sent the details of the competition when they have paid their entry fee. All entries must be set in that location. Globe Soup is a travel website but stories do not need to feature travel – it is up to the writer how they use the location in their story. The winning entry will receive £1,000. Enter original, unpublished flash fiction up to 800 words. The entry fee is £5. The closing date is 11 February. Website: www.globesoup.net…

If you are an unrepresented writer over the age of eighten and have an unpublished crime, mystery or thriller novel, the Crucible First Novel Award could help, offering an introduction of your novel to a number of established agents. The award is not open to novels which have been self-published or published traditionally. The Award is being organised by Grindstone Literary Ltd. To enter you will need to submit a pdf with the first 5,000 words of your completed novel, which must be for adult readers, along with an elevator pitch of 100-150 words. The deadline for submissions is 1 February. The award is free to enter and 20-30 of the best entries will be compiled into the Crucible Chapbook and forwarded to agents including Curtis Brown Books, The Ampersand…

The National Rhys Davies Short Story Competition is inviting entries from Welsh writers. Swansea University’s Cultural Institute has relaunched the competition for Welsh writers, which first ran in 1991. The National Rhys Davies Short Story Competition is for the best original, unpublished short story under 5,000 words by a writer from, or living in, Wales. The winner will receive £1,000 and ten runners up will each win £100. The winning and shortlisted stories will be published by Parthian Books in an anthology in 2021. The judge is author, essayist and reader in Creative Writing at Birkbeck Julia Bell, whose latest book is Radical Attention. Julia said: ‘I’m honoured to be judging this prize, in memory of a writer like Rhys Davies whose work deserves to be much better known and…

Muswell Press is inviting submissions for an anthology of Queer writing, Queer Life, Queer Love. The Queer Life, Queer Love anthology will be dedicated to the memory of Lucy-Jack Reynolds, the trans daughter of Muswell Press publisher Sarah Beal. Lucy-Jack died in March 2020, aged 2020. The anthology will be edited by author and Queer Lit presenter Golnoosh Nour as well as Muswell Press’s publishers Sarah and Kate Beal and Matthew Bates, the editor of Muswell Press’s LGBTQI+ list. ‘I’m incredibly moved to be co-editing this important anthology dedicated to honour the memory of a beautiful queer life and am excited to read submissions that reflect the full complexities of living a queer life, in whatever form they take,’ said Golnoosh. The anthology will be published in November 2021 and…

Soft Punk is an international arts and culture quarterly, based in London and New York. The editorial team ‘are intentionally agnostic of a “house style” and liberated from dogmatic conceptions of brow’. The team ‘curate emotive, insightful, and occasionally brazen visual features, with generous space reserved for poetry and art of all mediums.’ They want fiction in the form of ‘short stories, coherent novel excerpts, and anything that might be deemed flash,’ poetry, and ‘personal essays that have sentiment but aren’t sentimental’. However, ‘If what you’ve got doesn’t fit neatly into any of these genre distinctions, we’d probably love it too.’ This team want ‘strong meat’: no ‘tepid punditry, stale takes on things you’ve already read… or anything your grandparents might circulate to their rotary club’ but ‘we have few…

Lucent Dreaming is a UK print and online quarterly publishing ‘beautiful, strange and surreal short stories, poetry and artwork’ from writers worldwide. They team like ‘fiction that is readable and surreal, especially writing that embraces and explores inner-lives’. They insist that writers read a copy or two before submitting to get a feel for the kind of writing they enjoy. Doing so will prevent writers from making the error of submitting ‘Zombies, vampires, werewolves, especially sexy ones’ and ‘Elves, dwarves, and other fantasy scenarios that come across as LOTR fan fiction or any fan fiction’. No reprints, multiple or simultaneous subs please. The next issue’s theme is ‘Retellings – new tales for new times’. Submit fiction, 1,500-3,999 words, as a doc/docx file. Poetry, up to 56 lines, may be surreal,…

If you are reading a book series over a long period of time as each new volume comes out, it is easy to forget what’s happened before. UK website Recaptains offer a solution, with a mission statement to ‘saving series one book at a time’. The site offers summaries of books in series so that you don’t need to go back to the beginning and read them all again before catching with the latest addition to the saga. The focus is on YA titles and science fiction and fantasy, because that’s where most ongoing book series tend to be located, but other genres are included too. To date Recaptains covers over 150 book series, from Joe Abercrombie’s First Law to Kat Zhang’s The Hybrid Chronicles. Catch-up at http://recaptains.co.uk…

Chapeltown Books is a Manchester small press producing ‘beautiful books’. They publish children’s books, flash fiction anthologies and are looking for books for the Feisty Women series. Submissions are open for all imprints with specific guidelines for each. For picture books for children, writer-illustrators or a writer-illustrator team should submit the whole story and three sample pictures in one document. Indicate where page breaks would be or submit a pdf to show the suggested layout. Writers without illustrators should submit the whole text, with suggested pictures and page breaks. For emergent reader texts and novels, up to 20,000 words, submit the complete text. For books for ages 7-10, submit a synopsis and the first three chapters, or up to 20,000 words, whichever is the shorter. Books for teens and YA…

Published three times a year in February, May and September, Poetry London features both acclaimed contemporary and new poets. The magazine has an editorial aim to encourage emerging poets and on average, a third of its pages contain work from poets who have yet to publish a first collection. Pamphlets are reviewed in the autumn issue and first collections in every issue. Payment rates are £30 for one poem and £20 for subsequent poems. Review and interview rates are agreed in advance with the reviews editor and are benchmarked at £45 per 1,000 words. Submit a maximum of six poems by post or online by the Submittable link. At the time of writing, poetry editor Martha Sprackland was especially interested in poetry in translation and direct contact about this should…

The Cheshire Prize for Literature 2020 is inviting entries. This year’s competition for Cheshire writers is for writing themed around all aspects of the pandemic. There are four entry categories: short stories up to 1,500 words; poems up to 100 lines; writing for children (either a story or poem), and playscripts for radio, television of theatre up to fifteen minutes. In each category there is a prize of £500. All entries must be original and unpublished, and may be on any aspect of the pandemic, including lockdown and what has become ‘the new normal’. To be eligible to enter, must have been born or lived, studied or worked in Cheshire. For the competition purposes, that includes the Wirral, Warrington and Halton. Entry is free. The closing date is 31 January.…

AN INVISIBLE GIANT Gertrude Trevelyan is not exactly a household name these days but she was a literary sensation after the publication of her debut, Appius and Virginia, in 1932. The story of a forty-year-old single woman who vows to bring up a baby orangutan Appius as a human, and increasingly depends on him to overcome her loneliness, ‘the novel was heralded by the Spectator as “exciting both in promise and achievement”, while the eminent critic Gerald Gould wrote: “So original is it that I have scruples about writing the word ‘novel’ at all.”,’ reports Alison Flood for The Guardian. By 1940, Trevelyan had written seven more novels, until a bomb hit her Notting Hill home during the Blitz. She died of her injuries in February 1941, aged 37. Her…

100 years ago: April 1921 3 April: Coal was rationed in the UK during the coal strike that began in March. Classic German Expressionist silent horror film haditUSpremierewith Englishlanguage dialogue cards. American mathematician and aerospace engineer Mary Jackson – one of the protagonists in 2016 film was born. Actor, writer and film-maker Peter Ustinov was born. 80 years ago: April 1941 Footballer and World Cupwinning England captain Bobby Moore was born. Berthold Brecht’s anti-war play wasgivenitsworldpremiere, in Switzerland. Actor Ryan O’Neill was born. Radio broadcaster Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart was born. Swedish-American actor Ann-Margret was born. Australian virtuoso guitarist John Williams was born. British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood was born. 90 years ago: April 1931 The first edition of waspublished Op artist Bridget Riley was born. The pre-Code gangster film wasreleasedstarringJames…

‘When I read the submission draft of How the One Armed Sister Sweeps Her House, I was drawn by the immediacy of Lala’s story, the awful brutality that she, her mother and grandmother all endure in different ways, and their stoicism and honesty and capacity for love, too. That was also the case with Mira Whalen, a spoilt but also strong young woman who finds herself a widow after a terrible murder, losing the husband she now realises she really loved. ‘Underneath the glamour of a “holiday island” is the reality of these everyday lives with all the aggression, deprivation and yet also laughter and sweetness thrown in. ‘Cherie’s narrative voice is so vibrant as she interweaves the story and plot with flickers of life as it is: braiding the…

‘I was a features writer at my local newspaper, The Chester Chronicle, when I was contacted by Janet Holt from Derbyshire, asking if I could help her to write her life story,’ writes subscriber Helen Parker. ‘She sent me an initial lovely, light-hearted tone of All Creatures Great and Small (she was a farmer) – until, half way through, when I read a couple of paragraphs where she described the disappearance of her business partner in 1976 – and the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. manuscript which had the ‘I discovered that Fred Handford’s disappearance was still an “open case” with Derbyshire police and after meeting Janet and speaking to a good friend of mine who is a practising psychologist, Janet agreed to attend therapy. ‘I…

‘The two highlights of my lockdown life have been: the arrival of my copy of Writing Magazine, welcomed like an old and trusted friend, and the publication of Fame & Fortune, the eighth book in The Victorian Detectives series, writes subscriber Carol Hedges. ‘Once again, Scotland Yard’s finest, Detective Inspector Stride and Detective Sergeant Cully track the forces of evil through the crowded thoroughfares of 1860s London. And win. Of course. ‘Writing a series was never my intention, so to have published eight novels is, frankly, a bit of a surprise. After each book, I’ve thought: that’s it. I don’t have another novel in me, but somehow, as the weeks passed, a plot has emerged and the characters have demanded to be allowed to get to grips with it. ‘I…

What’s the big idea behind your story? The central concept, the big question, the one line pitch, the overarching theme – any or all of those things, because to some extent they are roughly interchangeable – how does your story-indevelopment measure up? Or, to put it another way, do you know what you are writing about, and could you tell someone else in a few wellchosen words? Or at most in a short sentence or two? You might have come across the expression elevator pitch. It’s based on the assumption that a writer is momentarily alone in an elevator with an influential literary agent or the sort of publisher who might like his or her kind of fiction, and has a minute or two to tell this person about the…

I miss my sister. And I do not knowhow she could leave our green and pleasant realmto feel the weight of air-borne gravity,to move in two planes only and not knowever again the sudden surge of pleasure,the sensual thrill that thrusting upward brings,through many shades of green that shift and growlighter with each tail twist and turn untilyou break the ocean’s surface and assessthe sea’s mood: sparkling in the sunor grey and threatening under cloud,with white top waves enticing, pulling,and begging to be ridden… But she did. She broke our laws and went to the sea-witch,exchanged her dowry for a potent spelland gained two legs to walk on land, and spreadwide for her earth-bound lover. No way back. For even if she braved our High King’s wrath–Expressed perhaps by banishment…

It might be a dark day – either the weather or some situation causing this. Either way, you have that urge to escape the darkness and write a poem. But although you feel a need to do this perhaps you don’t know what to write about? I have often felt like this so let’s try working on a poem together. For instance, lets start with four words as follows: ‘Today I will write.’ Then make another line as though progressing into a poem and write five words: ‘Will it be a poem?’ Then a third line, with six words ‘I will write the words revolving’ then go to the next line and use enjambment (see, already we are slipping into poetry mode!) and now seven words – ‘round my mind,…

Q I have an idea for a police procedural set in 1989. It involves a body discovered on school premises in violent circumstances. Based on your knowledge of police investigations how would the police handle such a situation? Also, what would female police detectives in the late 1980s have to have dealt with in terms of career obstacles? Martin Quill, by email A Even though it was set in a school, the investigation would still be dealt with as if the body was discovered anywhere else. The police would cordon off the scene, and depending on where the body was found and the size of the school, they would prevent anyone from entering the school or the area they had deemed to be the crime scene. I joined the police…

First prize is £1,000 in the New Welsh Writing Awards 2021. The prize is open to fiction and non-fiction, as long as it has a Welsh theme or setting. Entries should be 5,000-30,000 words. The winner will receive an e-publishing deal and feedback from Curtis Brown literary agent Cathryn Summerhayes. Second prize is a four-night stay at Nant writers’ retreat cottage within the grounds of Literature Wales’ Ty Newydd Writing Centre in Gwynedd, and third prize is a two-night stay at Gladstone’s Library in Flintshire. The entry fee is £12. The closing date is 16 March. Website: www.bit.ly/NewWelshAwards…

Bridgend Writers’ Circle Annual Open Competition offers £100, £50 and £30 prizes for short stories, 1,500-1,800 words. Entry fee is £5, £2.50 each additional, and the closing date is 1 March. Website: www.bridgendwriters.org Bloomsbury has acquired the first novel in 46 years by Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka. Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, set in Nigeria and ‘a savagely witty whodunit and a corrosively satirical examination of corruption, both personal and political’, is expected in September Author, poet and hip hop artist Karl Nova has won this year’s Ruth Rendell Award. The award, launched in 2016, celebrates an author who has done outstanding work to champion literacy. Karl was praised for his ‘unwavering commitment’ to inspiring young readers and writers, with more than 75 visits to…

The 2021 Bristol Short Story Prize is open for entries. The competition, which is run in association with Tangent Books, has a first prize of £1,000. There is a second prize of £500, and a third prize of £250. Seventeen further shortlisted writers will each win £100. There is a £100 Sansom Award for the best short story by a Bristol-based writer. All winning and shortlisted writers will be published in the Bristol Prize Short Story Anthology Volume 14. The judging panel is Irene Baldoni, Tom Robinson and Mahsuda Snaith. The competition is international, and open to all writers, published and unpublished. Stories may be up to 4,000 words, and should be original and unpublished. Entries may be in any genre, and there are no formatting requirements. There is an…

Spirit & Destiny magazine (Bauer) are currently closed to fiction submissions. Features editor, Tracie Couper said, ‘I have a fair few commissioned Spiritual Fictions still to use and therefore feel it wouldn’t be fair to commission any more right now.’ This seems a sensible move as writers have been waiting up to two years from acceptance to publication in the monthly magazine. The current situation is only temporary, and Tracie will announce, via the magazine’s Facebook page, when submissions reopen.…

In the biggest shakeup of the industry in years, the ‘big five’ publishers are about to become the ‘big four’, as Penguin Random House (itself part of the giant German media company, Bertelsmann) is in the process of purchasing Simon & Schuster from ViacomCBS for $2.175 billion. That is a figure almost twice what Viacom had originally hoped for when they put the sale on hold during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic in March last year. Yet with $814 million in US sales in 2019 alone, Simon & Schuster might even look like a bargain. The new, combined Penguin Random House Simon & Schuster, or whatever the new publishing behemoth is eventually called, it is estimated will have a combined share of around 30% of the US publishing…

Deep Overstock began simply as a journal to support booksellers who dreamed of writing. The editorial team, booksellers themselves, wanted to help their fellow frustrated writers. From this beginning grew the small press which now issues a quarterly journal and publishes books. They currently seek subs for the journal. The theme for each quarter, which can be interpreted quite freely, will be found at the website. The next, with a deadline of 28 February, is ‘mystery’. It publishes ‘fiction, poetry, comics, art, images, medical reports, plays, essays, philosophies, sculptures, sounds, mushroom dataset analyses, magic spells, fairy tales, folklore, riddles, jokes, horoscopes, death-predictions, and more’. They have a sense of humour and like to be surprised. Fiction, essays, other prose, should be no more 3,000 words, flash fiction must be no…

Portal Books are launching a new imprint devoted to fantasy and science fiction. While all subgenres of speculative fiction will be considered, the editorial team of Taran Matharu (author of the multi-million selling Summoner series), Michael Miller (the best-selling Battle Spire) and Brook Aspden are most interested in high fantasy, epic fantasy and sword and sorcery. They strongly prefer books to be at least 120,000 words long, though will accept submissions of works from 100,000 words plus. Portal Books have an open submission policy and will accept submissions from unagented writers anywhere in the world, as long as they are writing in English. Send your complete manuscript by email to submissions@portal-books.com. Include a cover letter with your name and contact details introducing yourself and outlining your relevant writing history. Also…

Australian publishers Gypsum Sound Tales specialise in short stories and novellas. They have two main publications, Colp and Thuggish Itch, which ‘allow… every author, no matter their experience or background, the opportunity to get their work out there.’ Authors who publish with them several times may also be asked ‘to write a story that features a pre-determined setting, with a host of common characters’. Submissions for Thuggish Itch open later in the year. Colp needs submissions now, of ‘anything goes, genre-free stories’, 1,000-5,500 words. The current theme is Underground, closing on 17 January and you are asked to consider, ‘Beneath the earth, beneath all the hustle and bustle of the big city, there are endless possibilities… mysterious creatures or forgotten cultures, tunnels that shouldn’t be followed and doors that should…

Small press Close 2 the Bone publishes novels and short stories. They need ‘gritty and interesting’ fiction across multiple genres, stories about ‘bank robberies gone bad, double-crossing bastards going at it, serial killers with a heart (maybe literally), redemption and revenge’. Not pulp though, the team like thoughtful and well written mysteries. They also publish ‘poetry and other genres such as western, science fiction and maybe fantasy, as long as they fit in with the “grit theme” the team are looking for.’ Open to subs for novels and short stories in January do check the website guidelines again then for details of exactly what they want. Submit a well-written short story of up to 5,000 words. Keep novels to the short end of 80,000 words. The story must be attached…

Cahill Davis Publishing is a new independent digitalfirst publisher of full length commercial fiction in English, launched in October 2020. ‘CDP was born from a love for books, stemming from the weekend trips to the library that I took with my grandmother as a kid,’ writes publisher Cassandra Davis. ‘I wrote my first book in 2012 while I was working full time and I know the pitfalls of writing and self-publishing for authors. After connecting with many likeminded authors both in person and on social media, I realised that even with the growing popularity of ebooks and self-publishing, there was still a need for a more traditional publishing house approach. There are so many things to consider when self-publishing that it becomes a business in itself and you spend more…

COMMERICAL FICTION PHOEBE MORGAN An editorial director at HarperCollins, and author of four novels, with The Wild Girls due out in April @Phoebe_A_Morgan “Lockdown or no, books matter.” I think it’s safe to say 2020 has been a curveball for us all. Thankfully, the publishing industry has got through it, and the top-line is that books are still selling. The support for independent bookshops in recent months (including the wonderful #SignForOurBookshops initiative from Holly Bourne) has been phenomenal and heart-warming to see, and we are all hoping for a strong 2021. Many are wondering if there will be a boom in cosy crime following the huge success of Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club, and we’re also seeing renewed interest in speculative fiction – perhaps born from a desire to…

After an incredibly strong showing in 2020, we’re pleased to announce the return of the £1,000 Writing Magazine Grand Prize. The open competition invites your short stories in any form, on any topic. The only stipulation is that your story should be a maximum 2,000 words. Runners-up prizes are £250 for second, £100 for third, a WM Course mini-critique for fourth and a twelve-month subscription for fifth. Stories will be judged by the Writing Magazine editorial team – editor Jonathan Telfer and assistant editor Tina Jackson – and the winner published in Writing Magazine ENTER NOW: Online, at http://writ.rs/1k2021 By post, using the form on p67 The entry fee is £15, or £10 for WM subscribers. Your submissions should be in a single document, with your contact details on the…

‘Idecided on publication by a reputable publisher as a personal objective sometime in my late teens. So I started submitting stories to local newspapers. The editors at the time would publish one or other of my stories in the Sunday lifestyle magazine and I’d be paid about $25 each time. Just to open the newspaper on Sunday and see a story I wrote was indescribable – pure elation. It was more the joy of thinking that someone “got” the story and thought it worthy of publication and less about being paid for publication, but I was hooked all the same. ‘When I had a few short stories together, I started querying. I also started entering writing contests. I figured the contests were a good way to gauge whether my work…

There’s some very good writing here. It’s difficult to capture the natural rhythms of thought or speech, but that effect is achieved in the juxtaposition of short and longer sentences. It feels like the character is talking directly to us, which makes for a powerful narrative voice. However, good writing deserves to be better. Vague or incorrect punctuation spoils the overall effect and makes the prose less precise. Knowing the rules and using punctuation to its fullest potential is the first responsibility of anyone who wants to write. Many writers prefer to punctuate according to what ‘feels’ right, but that doesn’t work. It’s just wrong. Moreover, it’s not professional. If a writer doesn’t know the rules, who should? Sometimes when writing, we unconsciously lapse into formal prose – perhaps because…

‘It started as a joke,’ writes subscriber Pam Keevil. ‘“Why don’t you compile all those great ideas you used from psychology, personal development when you were a coach and leadership trainer?” I said to my husband Peter. That was in August 2019. We let the idea fester and booked a holiday in Costa Rica in February 2020 to develop a plan and begin to write. We arrived back with 20,000 words. Then lockdown happened. 1,000 words a day, three major revisions and by the beginning of June we had a completed manuscript. The focus, however, had shifted slightly. ‘Since the onset of the pandemic, we were aware many people had expressed dissatisfaction with the old normal and wished to improve their lives. But how? Especially when data showed that the…

‘We (Anne Forrest and Judy Price), both left school at fifteen with little opportunity for further education until decades later when Judith studied for a BA, and Anne for a Masters, in English Literature with Creative Writing at Wales’ Bangor University,’ writes subscriber Anne Forrest. ‘This degree covered poetry, short stories, the novel, screen writing, and transformative work. Both eager to continue with our studies we undertook a Masters degree at the University of Chester in Creative Writing: Writing and Publishing Fiction. At Chester, we studied their speciality, flash fiction, through to a full-length novel, together with the many aspects of publishing. ‘Acknowledging the difficulty and disadvantages of traditional publishing, especially for two unknown writers, we decided to self-publish our collection of short stories, which are now available on Amazon…

‘I am very proud to announce the publication of my debut horror novel, Deep Level, and it’s all thanks to Writing Magazine,’ writes subscriber Rhydderch Wilson. ‘In April 2019 I wrote to WM asking if there was still a market for novellas. You published my letter and assured me that the format was alive and kicking. ‘Fast forward to April 2020 and I am furloughed from my job as a commercial scriptwriter in the radio biz, which I love. I was at first disappointed, but I dusted myself off and set about finding a publisher for my now completed tale. ‘To my astonishment, it was picked up by only the third publisher I submitted to, DarkStroke Books. The idea for Deep Level came to me in a nightmare. It’s the…

‘At the beginning, I wish I’d known that it is easier to there. In fact, you can only edit words that are actually there. So, rather than obsess about every sentence being perfect as it lands on the page (because, unless you’re a genius, that’s not going to happen very often) it is far better to get that draft down. Tell yourself the whole story without constantly reworking it. Enjoy the energy that a rough ride through your first draft brings. Then you get to start polishing. ‘Later, when you’ve got your words written, rewritten, and edited beautifully, it’s time to check that your baby manuscript actually works. Bring on the beta readers and critique partners. But I wish I’d known that, vital as unbiased feedback is, it is okay…

It was duskwhen I sprang from the towerhigh over the Cambridgeshire fens.Poised at first on pointed toes,arms out-stretched, I dived ….No practised art this, no feathered bird,no death wish, just a lust for flight.No engine, but the beating of my heart. We gathered as the light grew dim.A single cry at first,then other voices joining in,a murmur, a rising, a thrumming, a humand the draught of ten thousand wings. The map of fields below, rooftops, hamlets, trees,shifted sideways and up-tilted,briefly taking the place of clouds. Dipping, sweeping, wheeling, swooping,swirling, never once colliding,joyously we glided,formed patterns against the darkening sky,thick smoky whorls that thinned and spread,then turned to black again. As darkness fell, a sudden hush,a coordinated peeling off,to drop like stonesand settle in the waiting woods to roost. I was…

The Correspondent styles itself as a journalism platform focused on constructive, in-depth reporting. Managing editor Eliza Anyangwe says the site places a high value on diversity and wants to impact journalism itself with an approach to stories that are ‘transnational, collaborative and constructive’. The Correspondent’s readers are deeply curious, globally minded and radically hopeful. The editorial team are particularly interested in stories on the following themes: money, trade and global financial systems; work lives, workplaces and work practices; culture, media, spirituality; biodiversity and stories about non-human life; migrations, land, borders and states/statehood; the information frontier and the digital world; wealth and inequality; climate solutions and economy; modern lives and modern love; food and farming, and finally, ‘waste’, however you interpret that. While addressing one (or more) of the above themes,…

Entries are invited for The Caterpillar Poetry Prize 2021. Win a €1,000 prize for the best poem for children in the contest, which will be judged by Michael Morpurgo. The annual competition from The Caterpillar journal for children is for a single original, unpublished poem for children aged 7 to 11. As well as receiving the €1,000 prize, the winner will be published in The Caterpillar. Poems may be on any subject, and up to 150 lines. The entry fee is €14 per poem. The closing date is 31 March. Website: www.thecaterpillarmagazine.com…

Jo Fletcher Books is part of the Quercus family. Jo proudly states that the imprint is ‘a small but perfectly formed list’, publishing ‘critically acclaimed, award-winning and unputdownable novels right across the fantastical spectrum, encompassing everything from crime to literary fiction’. Her books have to be ‘chunky, engrossing epic fantasy or fast-paced dystopian thrillers, alternate history or paranormal romance, far-future SF or mythic fantasy, spine-chilling horror or heroic fantasy’. Submissions are currently open. Read the guidelines and follow them. They want exciting science fiction, fantasy or horror, no short stories or novellas, or children’s or YA. The novel must be finished and ready for publishing and indies take note, they will accept ‘manuscripts that have been previously selfpublished as long as the author is happy to let all rights revert…

Harriet Shephard is the editor of the online Women & Golf magazine. ‘Women & Golf is a thirty-year-old brand focused on women’s golf, from crowd level to amateur,’ said Harriet. ‘We cover tournaments, but also subjects that affect club golfers, including instruction, fashion, even pilates – everything to do with the lifestyle and how to play. W&G is online only at the moment – we launched the website last year and we’ve got a beginners section and a members section for subscribers.’ Women & Golf covers a wide range of topics. ‘Golf is quite behind the times so there’s a lot to write about in terms of equality and why women don’t get more exposure and recognition,’ said Harriet. ‘Playing sport is so empowering and I speak to ladies who…

The Booth editorial team publishes ‘four titles of original literature on the first Friday of every month’ and ‘two print issues yearly, usually in summer and winter’ Booth is published by the staff, students, faculty, and alumni from the Butler University MFA programme. The team are open to subs annually, from 1 September to 31 March, and seek poetry, fiction, nonfiction, comics, lists, and audio files. Currently the team need more of ‘the last four please. We want more of those.’ Read the back issues as this is a literary journal with quirky tastes and writers need to find their style and tone. Submit poetry: up to three poems in a single document, fiction or creative nonfiction work, up to 7,500 words, comics, up to twenty pages. Audio work may…

Previously unpublished articles that are ‘well written and thoughtful’ are wanted for Australia based Quadrant magazine which sees itself as a ‘journal of ideas, essays, literature, poetry and historical and political debate’ and has a founding bias towards ‘cultural freedom, anti-totalitarianism and classical liberalism’. The magazine is published monthly in print and online for ten months of the year with combined issues in January-February and July-August. It publishes over 200 articles, 200 poems, twenty short stories and seventy book reviews each year. Non-fiction articles and fiction may be anything between 1,500 and 5,000 words long, book reviews 800-2,000 words and poetry can be a few lines or several pages. The magazine does publish article footnotes in its online issues but not generally in its printed issue. Here, it is advised…

Grain Magazine is a quarterly Canadian literary journal published by the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild and is based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. The title was launched in 1973 and accepts fiction, literary nonfiction and poetry from writers anywhere in the world. Enquire first for other forms, such as short plays or comics. Grain has an annual eight-month submission window, which runs from 15 September to 15 May, for work that is ‘engaging, surprising, eclectic and challenging’. It is advisable to have read at least one issue before submitting. You can submit twice in one submission period, but don’t send a second sub until you have had a response to the first. Editors Nicole Haldoupis and Lisa Bird-Wilson (fiction and nonfiction) and Alasdair Rees (poetry) require submissions no longer than 3,500 words for…

Tiny Fox Press is an independent publisher, primarily of speculative fiction. ‘We mainly have a strong scifi/fantasy bend to all our works, but we do dabble in other genres occasionally (fun mysteries and historical fiction for example),’ said editor-in-chief Galen Surlak-Ramsey. Tiny Fox Press is approaching its firth birthday. ‘We first came together in the summer of 2016 when we thought amongst ourselves, “Hey… what if we started up a small press?”,’ said Galen. ‘The first mention was more daydreaming than anything, but after a few days of tossing it around between us all, we decided to go for it. We spent the next couple of months outlining all we needed to do; settled on a name and logo; got our legal ducks in a row, etc. On 1 January…

Welcoming unsolicited proposals for non-fiction and children’s books Gill Books work closely with new and more experienced writers to firstly discuss their project its viability and the develop of the manuscript. Their collaborative team will then co-ordinate and optimise the processes of production, editorial, marketing, sale and distribution. The publisher is based in Dublin and in general has a focus on books of Irish interest. In addition to children’s books this covers a wide variety of topics, including biography, food and drink, history, hobbies and craft, humour, information & reference, lifestyle, mind, body, spirit, nature, parenting, politics and current affairs, sport and true crime. If you think this is the publisher for your book submit two sample chapters, a contents table or chapter outline and a descriptive outline or synopsis…

Queer Lit is a new UK online bookshop for readers of LGBTQ+books. Managing director Matthew Cornford said he had the idea to start Queer Lit after visiting ‘the biggest bookshop in the North’ and being shocked to discover it didn’t have an LGBTQ section. The new online store currently stocks 700 titles, but also is designed to be ‘an immersive experience with everything Queer Lit’. Matthew explains, ‘Even living in Manchester, which has a vibrant gay community, sadly there are still people who feel they cannot be open about who they are, or some are still on that journey of discovery. So I wanted to create a welcoming space where people can not only read about issues and characters that reflect their lives and experiences, but discuss it, and be…

Prestigious and pro-active US indie Black Lawrence Press are offering $1,000 plus publication in The Big Moose Prize. The prize is for an unpublished novel by writers of any level and accepts traditional and other forms, including novels-in-stories, novels-in-poems and ‘other hybrid forms that contain within them the spirit of a novel’. Submit a full manuscript of 90-1,000 pages by 31 January. The entry fee is $25. Website: https://blacklawrencepress.com/submissions-and-contests/the-big-moose-prize/…

Repeater Books publishes intelligent, radical books that present alternative thought for a wide readership. ‘We work across every genre and niche, the two connecting strands being that ours are books that we believe have to be in print, and that they all reflect our taste,’ said publisher Tariq Goddard. ‘So for example, this month we have released books on the political history of London, an occult guide to the United Kingdom and a dystopian literary thriller.’ Repeater Books is approaching its seventh anniversary. ‘We started in 2014, having formerly been Zero Books and fallen out with our parent company, John Hunt Publishing,’ said Tariq. ‘Our approach and avowed mission was similar, which was getting into print authors missed by mainstream publishers, and discovering first time authors. Like most small to…

Laxfield Literary Associates, working in association with Blake Friedman Agency, represents Norfolk and Suffolk writers, authors from under-represented backgrounds, and of particular interest, authors based in Africa and the Middle East. At the time of writing they were looking for authors of literary and commercial fiction and creative non-fiction in the areas of travel writing, memoir and nature writing. To submit fiction, email the first three chapters of your book with a cover letter saying a little about yourself. For non-fiction submit two sample chapters and a one page summary of your project together with a cover letter with information about yourself and the background to your book. For all submissions format your work as a MS Word document with your contact details. Email with the title of your book…

The Skyhorse Publishing editorial team call themselves ‘the fastest-growing small publisher in America’. They aim to ‘work hard, move fast, have fun, make money, and change lives for the better by publishing superior books on a wide range of topics from as many differing viewpoints as possible’. They are ‘passionate about the topics they publish, and value honesty, integrity, mutual respect, and teamwork’. Their ‘core categories include outdoor sports, adventure, team sports, nature, and country living, with a good dose of politics, true crime, history and military history, reference, and humour – practical, literary, and general trade.’ Skyhorse Publishing has nineteen imprints: children’s books as Sky Pony Press, regional sports books from Sports Publishing, practical books for creative professionals from Allworth Press, and literary fiction and nonfiction from Arcade Publishing.…

New York born and based author Raven Leilani has won the $50,000 Kirkus Prize For Fiction for her debut novel, Luster. Raven also won the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a remarkable double which establishes her as a major new figure in the US literary world. Making her awards even more lucrative, to mark the fifteenth year of the First Novel Prize, the prize money was increased this year from $10,000 to $15,000. The Kirkus Prize was established in 2014 to celebrate ‘‘eighty-plus years of discerning, thoughtful criticism Kirkus Reviews has contributed to both the publishing industry and readers at large.’ This year’s Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction was won by Mychal Denzel Smith for Stakes Is High: Life After the American Dream, while the Prize for Young Readers’ Literature…