The NWN Journal is a place for us to share insights from across our work, as well as for writers from the North to share the ideas that interest them.
Showing articles that are tagged Northern Writers' Awards×Clear
Poet and Northern Writers' Awards winner Kate Davis gives us some great advice on why applying and taking the plunge is always worthwhile.
Shelley Day Sclater, winner of the 2011 Andrea Badenoch Award, discusses how the award impacted her life and career as a writer.
In this post, Maria Isakova Bennett discusses her experience in winning her Northern Writers' Award, and how that changed her confidence and work as a poet and artist.
If writing a book is a strange process that can take you from inspiration to despair, then crowdfunding one is peak emotional rollercoaster. In this post, Northern Writers' Award winner Amy Lord lets us in on the wild world of crowdfunding a novel.
Iain Rowan, winner of the 2018 Arvon Award, lets us know about his experience winning the award and how he spent his time in rural Shropshire.
I’ll start with a confession. When I first read Virginia Woolf’s famous essay ‘A Room of One’s Own’ in my early twenties, I didn’t really relate to it. Fresh out of university and managing my dreams of being a writer alongside my office day job, I responded to Woolf’s feminist politics, but didn’t feel the necessity of her prescription. In fact, I dismissed it as a middle class luxury.
Since 1996, New Writing North has helped identify and develop new talent through a range of initiatives. Today we are discussing why projects like the Northern Writers' Awards and Penguin Random House's WriteNow are so important to a flourishing literary landscape.
Eloise was the recipient of the Cuckoo Young Writers Award 2017, she makes time to write both poetry and prose around her studies, taking inspiration from anything she can find.
Writer, researcher, lover of words and previous Northern Writers' Awards-winner, Yvonne Battle-Felton tells us where she writes, creating a detailed picture of her day to day process.
As we reach the end of the entry period, applications for Northern Writers’ Awards 2018 are coming in thick and fast. We asked Will Mackie, New Writing North’s Senior Programme Manager (Writing and Awards) for his advice for those who are still finessing their application.
Amy Lord, Northern writer and blogger invites us into the cosy space she uses to write, the very place in which she finished her Northern Writers' Award winning title The Disappeared, due to be published by Unbound.
Yorkshire-based writer and previous Northern Writers' Award winner, Richard Smyth invites us to see where he writes. As a writer of journalism, short stories and novels, as well as being a part of the Mastermind question team and a crossword creator, his writing space is also his office.
Sarah Dunnakey submitted the first three draft chapters of her novel The Companion for the Northern Writers’ Awards 2014. Three years on she writes about her experience of applying and winning, just before her appearance at the NWAs 2017 Yorkshire Roadshow.
Jessica Sinyard, our December blogger in residence, offers tips for aspiring screenwriters on entering competitions
"When asked that old question, ‘Why study Creative Writing?’ I used to shoot back, ‘Because I want to be a waiter’. It’s a spin on a Billy Connolly joke that guarantees a cheap laugh. Yet, like many arts graduates I know, I was a waiter after my Creative Writing BA. A temporary fix that lasted years, as I struggled to compile a first collection I felt confident with..."
"Having a standard way of communicating allows readers to be undistracted by trying to decipher a new form each time they read a script, and instead to immerse themselves in what really matters – your story, your characters, and the world you have created."
“I thought I’d be out of here at eleven but that was actually really interesting!” A lady confides in me as she drops her evaluation form in the box on the way out. Sitting in a room for four hours with the temptation of a Christmas market sparkling outside is difficult, but evidently worth it. Besides, our audience are writers so they’re used to a challenge.
Each year we take to the road to spread the word about the Northern Writers’ Awards, visit new places and meet writers. It was a genuine pleasure to head to Sheffield last weekend for a special poetry-themed Roadshow run in partnership with pioneering publisher, the Poetry Business. As our expert speakers arrived for the day, I was tempted to abandon the planned programme and rapidly instigate a series of poetry readings. Clare Pollard, Degna Stone, Anna Woodford, Suzannah Evans and Mark Pajak formed a striking gathering of poetic talent in a single room, but we kept to the script and stuck to prose.
