Our Writers on Substack

Matt Taylor is an award-winning writer and music producer with a remarkable journey. Writing passionately about his experiences with the UK care system and the challenges of being a care leaver in the creative industries. Of Matt’s writing, the author Frances Wilson said, “Here is a writer who holds the reader in the palm of his hand”.

Underclass Hero is a view on life from someone of the underclass. I write about my experiences growing up in the UK care system and experiences from the life I now lead as a care leaver. This newsletter will give voice to the barriers often spoken about by care-experienced people and provide a perspective on how to clear them. For those who don’t share this background, you’ll find some helpful tips, too!

Read a highlight from Underclass Hero…

Pushed or Pulled? The paradox of how overprotection from the care system led me (and probably other children) into more dangerous situations.

“Drawn deletes any decision, removes any responsibility, cancels any culpability, frantically hits the backspace on any blame, cutting and pasting it all from the system to the dangerous situations, to the nefarious adults, to the innocent child.”

Sophie Underwood is a teacher, writer, and apprentice to the greenwood, based in England’s north. She has lived off-grid for most of her adult life, and loves to write about the unsung magic of the everyday world.

All the Wild Magic includes stories and correspondences direct from a remote woodland hut in England’s north. Hazel Cottage has no road access, no mains power and no address. It does have a pot-bellied stove, a whistling kettle, and goldcrests in the hedge. Join Sophie for a wander through the woods, or pull up a chair beside the fire. Magic, nature-connection, ecology, folklore, otherworldly portals, and life on the wild edges are explored.

Read a highlight from All the Wild Magic…

On Brimstones and Ancient Etches is a window into life at Hazel Cottage, with night-time musings directly from the heart of the woods.

“The window is open and I can hear the burn rushing to be with the big river. If I close my eyes the sound could be heavy rain. If I listen for long enough, I start to hear the water’s language and how it speaks in many voices, whispering deep-time mysteries of vast sky and ocean, eel and moon.”

Damian Kerlin is a culture journalist and broadcaster, with bylines in Attitude, The Telegraph and The Independent. Damian hosts Acast commissioned docu-series podcast ‘Memories from the Dancefloor’ which celebrates LGBTQ+ venues and shines a light on the history of these incredible spaces from the staff and patrons themselves. Memories from the Dance Floor was released in February 2023 for LGBTQ+ History Month. Season 2 was released June 2024. A book of the same theme will be published by Dialogue Books in 2025.

Material Queer celebrates queer culture in all its forms. From music to fashion, history to art. Championing the individual, as well as the collective, Material Queer, defines what it means to be queer with a vanguard of next generation writers, photographers and artists. Like Madonna’s hit Material Girl – Material Queer’s collection of features, interviews, reviews, and exclusives are as attention-seeking, rebellious, timeless and iconic. It’s a platform for all of the bold, stylish, and rebellious ways that LGBTQ+ people are reshaping our world every day.

Read a highlight from Material Queer…

Damian’s Dark Room Diaries is a series of interviews with people who have their own stories to tell – some funny, some sexy, some downright filthy – about their dark room experiences.

“But wait – what is a dark room? The questions come up more times than I can count, and it always feels loaded. Depending on who you ask, you might get the glint of nostalgia in someone’s eye, or a knowing smirk followed by a wink. But the real answer is that it’s more than just the room itself – it’s the history, the people, the shared experience of queer desire, all wrapped up in something as simple, and as thrilling, as darkness.”

Hattie Morrison writes experimental prose and is currently developing her first fiction novel. Literature Wales consider her to be “one of the most exciting and original voices to be coming from Wales at the moment,” while Greyhound Literary describe her writing as “vivid, riveting, compact, flavourful, colourful, powerful and taut.” She was part of Literature Wales’ Representing Wales Programme 2022-2023, and won the New Welsh Review Debut Novel Award for her non-fiction essay ‘Venus as a Spinster. Her work centres the female experience, and is informed by oral tradition and folklore.

(not) writing is a draft site and experimental outpost for Hattie Morrison’s work. On it, she shares early-stage essays and short form stories. The process of publishing work allows Hattie, at different points in her process, to understand her own creative boundaries and limitations. How much does she feel comfortable sharing? Why does she feel compelled to do so? Substack as a site, in this way, allows her to grapple with themes of privacy and expression, particularly from a gendered perspective, informed by the trope of ‘girl-online’.

Read a highlight from (not) writing…

Notes On Silence / Even A Kind Dog Will Bite. In late 2023, I was sexually assaulted in my home, an experience that irreversibly altered my relationship with writing and expression. My words were weaponised against me in court, challenging my character as a woman and victim. This essay, On Silence / Even A Kind Dog Will Bite, marks my first step in breaking a silence enforced between the arrest and his imprisonment. Written during an Arvon Writing Residency, it reflects on the process of reclaiming a voice.

Emma Astra, a 40-something working-class woman from Leicester, thought life was over when chronic illness ended her career and independence. Instead, she began a PhD and earned a place on New Writing North’s ‘A Writing Chance’, shaped and deeply influenced by transformative life experiences.

Diary of a Disabled PhD Student documents the work of my PhD thesis, ‘The Diary of a Disabled PhD Student: Sharing Lived Experience Using Digital Media and Journalism’. It includes Diary posts, The Disabled Peoples Project, Disabled Actors Project (biographies I created on social media) and the Creative Writing Hub, linking everything to Diary posts later reflected on in my thesis. Initially, Diary posts were Facebook entries collated chronologically and published as Substack chapters.

Read a highlight from Diary of a Disabled PhD Student…

Tales from the Hospital Ward is part of a fiction series that was created to explore my research methodology, but it became a way of processing a traumatic experience for personal therapeutic benefit.

Janice Okoh is a multi-award-winning British Nigerian playwright, radio dramatist and television writer. Her six part comedy drama will be broadcast on BBC3 in 2025. She also writes novels, and in 2023 her novel was shortlisted for the Bath Novel Prize and won a Black Writer’s Guild Mary Prince Memorial Award.

Living The Writer’s Dream shares tips and advice on navigating and surviving the creative industries. It features newsletters where we follow her step-by-step journey writing her second and third novels as well as serialising a historical romance.

Read a highlight from Living the Writer’s Dream…

Some Things I Wish I’d Known is a fictional letter from my older self imparting some words of wisdom to my younger self who dreams of being a playwright, TV and film writer.

“Remember, no one knows your script or play better than you. They might think they do— but they don’t.
Keep hold of your vision. And if you get a knockback, there’s always something better around the corner.”