New northern writers selected for Common People: An Anthology of Working Class Writers

We’re thrilled to announce that the three new writers put forward by New Writing North have all been selected to have their work published in Common People, a new anthology of working class writers.

Julie Noble, Louise Powell and SM Wilson will be published by Unbound alongside well-known writers including Kit de Waal, Malorie Blackman, Damian Barr and Stuart Maconie.

Julie Noble and Louise Powell had both previously taken part in our Significant Ink Professional Development Programme, while SM Wilson had participated in the Creative Future writing workshops that we run in partnership with Creative Future Literary Awards. The three writers join 14 other emerging writers from elsewhere in the UK whose work has been selected from hundreds of entries.

Kit de Waal, who is editing the collection, commented:
“What stories!  What lives!  It’s been so great to read these seventeen memoirs of working class writers.  All life is there; hard, (inevitably) but also wry, bizarre, sad and proud, there’s some kick-ass ones too, all of them laced through with a determination to see the funny side, to do more than survive, to celebrate.   It’s always a privilege to read a record of someone’s life and I’m absolutely delighted to welcome all these new writers to Common People, and can’t wait to see them all in print.”

The anthology will be published in May 2019. It is now fully funded, but you can still pledge to order your copy.

 

Introducing our writers…

Julie Noble – Detail

A mother of five, Julie Noble is a lone parent living on a small council estate in North East Yorkshire. Brought up in Leeds on the border of Chapeltown, Julie was the first in her family to go to university, studying Psychology at Lancaster. Two weeks before the final exams, she gave birth to her first child then graduated with honours. While marrying, having four more children, and divorcing, Julie did various jobs including childminding, banking, television work, bookkeeping and running children’s activity clubs. Her writing has won prizes and appeared in Mslexia, Writing Magazine and She magazine. In 2004, she self-published Talli’s Secret to raise awareness of Dyspraxia; her eldest son has the condition.

Louise Powell – This Place is Going to the Dogs

Louise Powell is a final-year PhD Researcher in English at Sheffield Hallam University, funded by the North of England Consortium for Arts and Humanities Research. After growing up in receipt of free school meals and attending local comprehensive schools, she was awarded a Sixth Form Academic Scholarship to Teesside High School. She gained a First Class degree in English from Teesside University, and an MA with Distinction in Medieval and Renaissance Literary Studies from Durham University. One of her short comedy sketches, ‘Are You Alright?’, was performed in 2016 as part of Bolton Octagon Theatre’s ‘Best of Bolton’ production, and in 2017 she participated in New Writing North’s Significant Ink Professional Development Programme for Screenwriting. She was also shortlisted four times for the Martin Wills Writing Awards for writing on a horseracing theme.

S M Wilson – Passengers

Born in Carlisle in 1980, and raised in Wigton, Cumbria, S M Wilson spent 15 years as a guitarist and lyricist in numerous Newcastle-based bands. In 2011 he left his band, sold his guitar, and began learning to write prose. He is currently working as a postman and studying towards an MA in creative writing at Northumbria University, for which he is developing a work of autobiographical fiction. In his spare time, he edits and contributes to Northumbria University’s creative magazine, The Edge. His short story ‘The Most Peculiar Flesh’, a tribute to Mishima, was published in print in Artificium’s Journal II. He has been published in New Writing Cumbria’s ezine, The Carrot, and occasionally blogs for the music-streaming site, Leaf.