It’s every aspiring authors dream, so join us for an evening where we discover what it takes to hook an agent and land representation. International superstar agent Kesia Lupo shares her expertise and insight, breaking down what it takes to impress a reader and stand out in the slush pile.
Welcome It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, as the song says and adverts constantly remind us. However, unlike just about everything else at this time of year, we’re not about to cost you […]
When my children’s debut, Secrets of the Snakestone, was published in March this year, I made the big mistake that all experienced writers counsel against: looking at the reviews on Goodreads…
Anna Llewellyn is a Welsh writer, illustrator, and literary editor living in New York City. Her work has appeared in The Toy Press, Cleaver Magazine, and Bartleby Snopes, and her plays for children have been produced across New York state.
When we lived in the Bullring we had balconies in the air. They were our playgrounds, me and Jimmy and John, and all our mates like Kitty next door and Eddie downstairs. The Bullring wasn’t a ring really, it was a long curve of tenements made out of brick and concrete, with a wide balcony that ran past the front doors on all four floors.
Rachel Cleverly is a poet, playwright and producer. Her debut pamphlet, Prickle, is forthcoming with flipped eye publishing. She is a Barbican Young Poet and an Old Vic Theatre Maker.
Sarah Ziman is a poet from Wales who likes cats, crisps, cake, reading and rhyme. She dislikes writing bios. She won the YorkMix Poems for Children Prize 2021, and enjoys annoying her own children by forcing them on nature walks or ‘dragging them into antique shops’. ‘Why did my Brain make me say it?’, her debut collection for children, is coming very soon.
They lived in a tall gaunt house near a river.
The mother was a painter, a bad one. Her head was full of dreams of magpies. She was bitter, intelligent, theatrical when drunk.
Tim Relf’s work has appeared in such titles as The London Magazine, The Rialto, Under the Radar, The Interpreter’s House, Banshee, Acumen, Bad Lilies, Stand, The Spectator and The Friday Poem.
Vicky Gatehouse is a zoologist, poet, volunteer tree-planter and children’s writer based in West Yorkshire. Her children’s poems have featured in Tyger Tyger, Dirigible Balloon, The Toy and Pan Macmillan anthologies. Vicky also writes picture books and was recently shortlisted for the Searchlight Awards and runner up for the Write Mentor Picture Book Prize.
You’re ten and walking out of your école élémentaire when some kids holler, ‘Your maman’s a smelly boat person!’
Debi Knight is a Neuro-diverse poet and short story writer based in West Yorkshire who considers herself a lifelong student. She writes the life she sees and feels around her – exploring connections between humans, nature and the effects of modern life on all.
Laura Theis’ work appears in Poetry, Oxford Poetry, The Caterpillar, Magma, Rattle, Tyger Tyger, Aesthetica, iamb, etc. Her Elgin-Award-nominated debut how to extricate yourself (2020), an Oxford Poetry Library Book-of-the-Month, won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize. A Spotter’s Guide To Invisible Things (2023) received the Live […]
The car is thudding in and out of holes in the road. I can’t tell where anything is until I’m driving over it. But I’m used to that. We haven’t had streetlights since I was a kid, and they stopped making headlamps a decade ago. No-one goes out in the dark apart from me.
Jane Burn is an award-winning poet, artist, poet and hybrid writer. She is a working-class person with autism. Her work is widely published and anthologised. Her current collection, The Apothecary of Flight, is published by Nine Arches.
The final collection in Ralph Dartford’s ‘Recovery Trilogy’ sees the poet meditating on the tragic death of his beloved brother, Joseph, and how he lived in the mythical house of England: a nation of waving flags seen through soft focus sunlight.
Welcome. Thirteen is supposed to be unlucky. Now, we’re not a tremendously superstitious bunch. We try not to walk under ladders, but we don’t steer clear of black cats and you won’t catch us chucking […]
Reader, if you have a printer then print this article out, step away from the screen and read it in one sitting. I say this because I’ve been thinking about reading, and reading about thinking. […]
Floods spread out like a bad feeling, getting everywhere you could imagine. They did so by stealth, bringing fear, as though a murderer was on the loose, not just an extra ten square miles of water. Rivers crossed smaller rivers and absconded with them.
Penny Sharman started writing poetry in her fifties. She is inspired by wild landscapes and relationships between the seen and unseen. She is a published poet, photographer, artist and therapist. Penny has an MA in Creative Writing from Edge Hill University, has had poems published in The North, Mslexia, Candlestick Press and many others.
Barbara Bleiman is an ex-English teacher and education consultant at the English and Media Centre (EMC), with a keen interest in poetry. She has written numerous articles and blogs and a book about English teaching, What Matters in English Teaching.
Barbara from channel four is halfway through her report on the boats when it happens. The sudden silence. The red of her blazer is replaced by a blue screen.
NO SIGNAL.
Check your internet connection and try again
Caleb Parkin, Bristol City Poet 2020 – 22, has poems in The Guardian, The Rialto, The Poetry Review and was guest poet on BBC Radio 4’s Poetry Please. He has three pamphlets.
Today, I had to sit on the think chair. Because I ate Maggie’s lunch.
‘It was not yours to eat,’ the teacher said.
‘But I was hungry,’ I said, but not out loud.
I had to sit on the think chair and think.
The morning after the exotic crash, Zeff wasn’t sure what could be done. He’d spent hours making calls, telling everyone who needed to know. Most of them were asleep, some of them couldn’t even understand.
Tommy Sissons is a novelist, poet, playwright and educator based in London. He is the author of the polemic ‘A Small Man’s England’, and the novel ‘Cautious, A Boat Adrift’.
Claire Schlinkert is a British children’s writer, currently living with her family in Belgium. She loves writing poems and playing with words, and she has published her writing in anthologies and magazines, including Tyger Tyger, The Toy and Little Thoughts Press.
You picked up a stone and threw it hard, overarm towards the horizon, dusting the sand from your fingertips onto the oversized woollen jumper that hung low beneath your zipped up cagoule.
Andrea Holland has two collections of poetry, ‘Broadcasting’, which won the Norfolk Commission for Poetry and ‘Borrowed’ (Smith/Doorstop) a first-stage winner in The Poetry Business contest. Individual poems appear in journals and anthologies.
The horse pulled up with a snort in front of the next dwelling on their list. The wizard, dozing in the cart behind, tugged the floppy hat from her eyes and did a double blink. An unusual place to live. But this was the Enchanted Forest, where building permission was granted retrospectively by council workers wary of the threat of curse and counter curse.
Russ Thomas is the bestselling author of the DS Adam Tyler novels, which include Firewatching, Nighthawking, Cold Reckoning, and his latest work Sleeping Dogs. He is published by Simon and Schuster in the UK, G.P. Putnam’s Sons (Penguin Random House) in the US, and is represented by Sarah Hornsley of Peters, Fraser + Dunlop.
A brand new feature from Northern Gravy. News direct to your inbox covering our thoughts on all things Poetry, Fiction and writing for Children. Plus tips on how to get published by us!
Vicky Foster is an award-winning writer, performer and poet who has broadcast extensively across the BBC. In this practical workshop, Vicky Foster discusses her new memoir, “It Happened Like This.” There will also be essential exercises on how you could write one too!
Edition Twelve is here, and it marks the end of year two of Northern Gravy. Two years is, paradoxically, both a long time and a very short time. It seems like only yesterday we were […]
Author of the DS Adam Tyler series Fire watching, Nighthawking and Cold Reckoning. Published by Simon & Schuster in the UK and by G.P. Putnam’s Sons (Penguin Random House) in the US. I’m represented by Sarah Hornsley of Peters, Fraser + Dunlop.
Wendy Dossett lives in rural Eryri. She’s fascinated by the experiences classified in some forms of Buddhism as craving, desire and aversion. She’s drawn to earth-bound and narrative sources of healing and hope that fully acknowledge the realities of suffering and inadequacy.
Just like I applaud when she makes dinner appear on the table like magic, or when she manifests tickets to the coolest new shows in town. She likes the recognition, likes to be seen. It’s something I noticed about her, even on our first date, when she made the wilting restaurant flowers re-bloom, and I had gasped in wonder.
Arlette Manasseh likes films, novels, poetry and chocolate. Some of her favourite reads are middle grade verse novels. These poems are taken from a verse novel she is writing about a thirteen year old girl called Breeze who lives in a small coastal town, where bullying has become a big problem.
Matt Gilbert is a freelance copywriter. Originally from Bristol, he currently gets his fill of urban hills in South East London. He has had poems published by Acumen, Atrium, Finished Creatures and The Storms among others. He also writes a blog about place, books, poetry and other distractions at richlyevocative.net.
I research how to make my boys’ hair grow faster: I wash it in special shampoo and ignore them when they complain I rinse it in cold water; I make them take additional vitamins after breakfast and massage their scalps while they’re watching TV; I buy a special brush with bristly bristles to distribute their natural oils and I do this two, three, four times per day.
Kelly Burden is a primary school Teaching Assistant, living in West Sussex with her husband and young daughter. She recently graduated with distinction from The University of Winchester’s MA in Writing for Children and is currently working on her first middle-grade novel.
Hannah Stone lives in Leeds, where she is involved in various community poetry events, including as convenor of the poet-composers forum for Leeds Lieder, compere of the monthly Wordspace open mic in Horsforth and free lance work as poet-theologian for Leeds Church Institute as well as events at East Leeds Community FM Radio.
“You need fattening up.” Mrs Murphy slapped another ladleful of boiled turnip onto her grown son’s plate. “Anyone would think I wasn’t feeding you.” Three months ago, when Alan returned to the nest, she bought him a set of matching shirts with the same confidence as she used to buy his nappies.
Sinéad Callanan is a teacher and poet from Limerick, Ireland. She is currently completing a Masters in Children’s Literature and Media. Her work has appeared in PaperBound Magazine, Little Thoughts Press and Paper Lanterns. Even more of her work has gone into making her friends, family and young pupils laugh.
Steve Denehan lives in Kildare, Ireland with his wife Eimear and daughter Robin. He is the author of two chapbooks and five poetry collections. Winner of the Anthony Cronin Poetry Award and twice winner of Irish Times’ New Irish Writing, his numerous publication credits include Poetry Ireland Review and Westerly.
I stand on Bernauer Strasse, looking at metal curls, wondering how high I can jump; whether I should be wearing trousers rather than a summer dress; whether I really should chance my luck now – maybe the rumours of concrete blocks to come, obscuring the view as well as the access to the other side of the street are false.
Mark Bird is a children’s poet and teacher. He was born in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire and now lives in London. Mark’s debut picture book, ‘Halloween Date From Hell’ came out in October 2022. Mark has featured in The Caterpillar, Gill Education’s ‘Over The Moon’ series, Brian Moses’ ‘The Best Ever Book of Funny Poems’ anthology and many magazines.
Want to write for primary aged readers? This interactive workshop has the secrets you need to write stories and poems for kids!
