Horror, as the old quote goes, is primarily a fear of the unknown. I make no assumptions that I understand what it’s like to not be White, which was one of the things that drew me to this anthology, aside from it having filmmaker Jordan Peele’s name prominently attached.
Sometimes you want one of those fancy restaurants where they serve you a dollop of something with a smear of something else on the side. Something that pushes boundaries, explores things, takes bold and provocative risks
And sometimes you just want a burger.
The Louder Than Words festival in partnership with Northern Gravy, Louder than War, Omnibus Press and the University of Huddersfield are delighted to announce the winners of the 2023 Wilko Johnson Writing Award.
Discover the art of capturing your memories and transforming them into immortal verse with acclaimed poet Toria Garbutt.
Rick Rubin has left an indelible mark on the history of music. He’s the man who revitalised Jonny Cash’s career. He cofounded Def Jam records and helped popularise hip hop. He been behind the boards on some of the biggest albums of the last 40 years.
That’s “Editions old”, not “Years old”, by the way, but still, it’s a significant milestone and one we’re delighted to be celebrating. Ten has such a lovely ring to it, someone ought to put an album out just called Ten. It’s a pearl of a name, very catchy for some musical jams.
Steve Ely’s most recent publications are Lectio Violant, The European Eel and Lives of British Shrews. A book-length poem, Eely, is imminently forthcoming from Longbarrow Press. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of Huddersfield where he is also Director of the Ted Hughes Network
My Mistress heard that the Queen shoots a longbow and has set herself to the same. As we tread the frozen river, ice all about us like the blue-white wastes of the underworld, I pull my cloak tighter to my shoulders.
Di Slaney lives in Nottinghamshire where she runs livestock sanctuary Manor Farm Charitable Trust and independent publisher Candlestick Press. She was the winner of The Plough Poetry Prize 2022 and Slipstream Open Poetry Competition 2023.
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.
All the seas are one creature. Of molten metal, iron-coloured, she has tsunamis for claws and white wave-crests for ears. Your ship rolls on her uncountable shoulders.
Rosie Garland is a writer and singer with post-punk band The March Violets, Rosie Garland has a passion for language nurtured by public libraries. Her poetry collection ‘What Girls do the Dark’ (Nine Arches Press) was shortlisted for the Polari Prize.
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 has poems in The Caterpillar, The School Magazine, The Toy, PaperBound, Paper Lanterns, Tyger Tyger, Little Thoughts Press, The Dirigible Balloon, Cricket, and anthologies by Macmillan and Pomelo Books.
A girl’s scream stills two dozen sieving hands. The sound carries across the sand flats and salt water pools, catching in the cliffs that confine the bay. Women, previously bent double and scattered along the shore, cluster around the girl.
Sam Szanto lives in Durham. Her collaborative pamphlet, ‘Splashing Pink’ was recently published by Hedgehog Press and is a Poetry Book Society Winter 2023 Pamphlet Choice. Her pamphlet ‘This Was Your Mother’ was one of the winners of the 2023 Dreich Slims Contest and will be published in 2024.
Leigh Manley is a new poet from Wales. He likes watching rugby, drinking cups of tea, acting silly, and making up fun words and sentences! He is currently part of Literature Wales’ ‘Representing Wales’ writers’ development programme for 2023/24 and he’s had work published with The Dirigible Balloon. He is working on his first poetry collection for curious children and the young at heart.
While rinsing the pink gravel from the fish tank, I sneak a handful into my mouth. The rounded stones rattle around my teeth, massaging my tongue, before tickling their way down my throat.
Michael Conley is a poet and prose writer from Manchester, UK. His latest collection is a pamphlet published by Nine Pens, called “These Are Not My Dreams And Anyway Nothing Here Is Purple”. He was the recipient of the 2022 Peggy Poole Prize.
Eibhlís Carcione is a bilingual poet and children’s author from Cork, Ireland. Her three poetry collections in Irish, Tonn Chlíodhna (2015), Eala Oíche (2019), and Bean Róin (2023), are published by Coiscéim. She has won numerous awards for her poetry.
We partnered with Damien John Kelly House, managed by Vitality Homes. Damian John Kelly House is an abstinence-based recovery living centre, for adult males based in Liverpool. Their aim is to provide recovery from addiction via arts, sport and culture, with the belief that they will lead to purpose, belonging and connection.
The Louder Than Words team, in partnership with Northern Gravy, Louder Than War, Omnibus Press and the University of Huddersfield are delighted to announce details of the 2023 Wilko Johnson Writing Award.
Once in a while, you probably do something weird just for the hell of it. Maybe it’s a compulsion to see what something feels, tastes or sounds like, or perhaps you just let the intrusive thoughts get their own way for once.
Join Jamie McGarry (Valley Press) and the Northern Gravy team as we untangle the knots of how to submit your work to publishers.
Welcome Welcome to the ninth edition! Are you ready? We can’t hear you! Are you – you know what, this is an email isn’t it, so of course we can’t hear you. Sorry about that. […]
Tommy Sissons is a poet, writer and educator based in London. He is the literary editor of GRASS Magazine, a publication specialising in the promotion of working-class creatives.
Yanita Georgieva is a Bulgarian poet and journalist living in London. She is a recipient of theOut-Spoken Prize for Poetry and a member of the Southbank New Poets Collective. You can find her work in The London Magazine, Poetry Wales, bath magg, and elsewhere.
Sylvie said, if you want to make a baby, you have to break some eggs. It never became entirely apparent what she meant by that, but, in the manner of people desperate for a solution to an unsolvable problem, we returned to her time and again nonetheless.
As I push open the high wooden gate, blue paint peels off into me palm. I let the flecks fall to the ground and go into the back yard. Mrs Walker’s old tabby prowls along the wall overlooking the alley. She flops down and gives me a filthy look before closing her yellow eyes for a nap.
Peter has published eight collections of poetry and one book of translations. He has a new collection arriving in September. Peter has written obituaries for The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph, and blogged for both. He has written reviews for The Independent and The Catholic Herald and many more for literary magazines.
At the beginning, it was just little things, like where did he put his watch or what was the name of that guy he went to school with. Nothing out of the ordinary. Now, his father’s voice often trailed off mid-speech.
Carole Bromley lives in York. Winner of 2022 Caterpillar Prize, she also has poems in Tyger, Tyger, Paper Lanterns, The Toy, Little Thoughts Press, Paperbound, The Dirigible Balloon, in anthologies from MacMillan, Emma Press and Nosy Crow as well as in her Smith/Doorstop collection for children, Blast Off!
Susie is an autistic Scottish poet, living in Sheffield. She has been published widely in anthologies (including for Winchester, Gloucester and Shepton Mallet’s Competitions), commended by Fresher and Poets & Players, longlisted in The Rialto Nature Competition, appearing also recently in Envoi, Monofiction and Black Bough.
I think of Manhattan, New York, as I put my daughter to sleep. I think of ascending the face of a building, like paper caught in an exchange of air. My thoughts are blockish, grey. Patterned into the tight, potent space between buildings.
On Fridays, some of us get tiny cubes of yellow cake. A behaviour thing, a reward if you like. Today I don’t get one. Tam offers to split hers, but the scared six-year-old in me still thinks I might live to regret that sort of kindness. I eat my dry crackers in silence.
David has many voices and personalities; all of these are influenced by his dissociative identity disorder. He can assimilate voices and accents, even languages quickly. His alterscan influence the subjects chosen by them to write about.
The rain was still siling down as the taxi pulled up outside Rayners. Lucy guided Nanna Shaz and Nanna Pat out the car and into the pub whilst Mam paid the fare from Chants Ave. They’d been to the funeral of Lucy’s last surviving Great Nanna.
Charlie Bown is a children’s poet and author. She has two children’s anthologies published through Magic Daisy Publishing and two of her poems appear in the Chasing Clouds anthology from The Dirigible Balloon. Her debut children’s chapter book is due to be published by Ventorros Press in 2023.
We’ve been shortlisted for “Best Magazine” and “Most Innovative Publisher” in the 2023 Saboteur Awards! Please vote for us again for the final decisions. Recognition will help us grow and provide more opportunities for all writers.
On this episode, we’re going back to our recent live event with Lisette Auton, to have a go at a writing exercise she uses to break through writer’s block and supercharge her writing. Lisette is […]
On this frightful episode of the Northern Gravy podcast, our fiction editor Nick chats with Lauren O’Donoghue and Rebecca Summerling about writing horror, game design, spooky book recommendations and more! You can find more of […]
Join us for an evening of writing craft and knowledge sharing. We will discover Lisette’s journey to publication, plus discuss her work as a poet and a performer on the spoken word scene.
Welcome to edition eight Can you feel it? Spring is in the air, and not a moment too chuffing soon. The weather’s changing, and soon it’ll be T-shirt tans, BBQs, and beer gardens. But one […]
Nobody else will ever be able to write a book like my new novel Venomous Lumpsucker. I mean that in the very literal sense that one of the essential tools I used to write it no longer exists.
Holly Gordon Clark is a seventeen year old poet and works as a librarian and bookshop worker. Her work and writings have been published in Fireside Fiction, Cat Among the Pigeons and have been prized by St John’s Oxford.
Winter visited the parish early that year. The folk in that part of the world were poor at the best of times, and the snap of cold brought with it a slew of further hardships.
Susan Darlington’s poetry regularly explores the female experience through nature-based symbolism and stories of transformation. . It has been published in Dreich, Dream Catcher, One Hand Clapping, Hedgehog Press, and Ink Sweat & Tears.
Dear Reader,
Whoever you are, congratulations! You have successfully intercepted my royal letter. And that is quite a feat.
A priest, a rabbi and an atheist walk into a bar and not one of them is in the mood for a joke.
They had decided ahead of time to stagger their arrivals and lie about where they were going.
