New Writing North launch The Bee, a new showcase for working-class writers
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The Bee is a new showcase for working-class writers. It includes a website, literary magazine, podcast, and an online space for professional development for working-class writers. It is editorially independent from New Writing North, and the fiction, non-fiction, interviews, photography, and commentary it publishes will both entertain, stimulate and provoke debate.
The Bee has been created to fight the increasing marginalisation of working-class writers, and of working-class people in publishing. Just 10% of authors and writers are from working-class backgrounds, whilst 47% are from the most privileged social starting points and 44% of newspaper columnists attended independent school (only 7% of the population attend independent schools).
The Bee was born out of A Writing Chance, a UK-wide programme for working-class writers. new Writing North co-founded the programme with the actor and philanthropist Michael Sheen, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and Northumbria University. A Writing Chance alumni have already gone on to become published authors, including Tom Newlands whose novel Only Here, Only Now was published in 2024 to critical acclaim.
A Writing Chance has succeeded in helping working-class writers to publication and pushing working-class writing up the publishing industry’s agenda. However there is a still a need to provide a place to showcase great working-class writing.
Claire Malcolm, CEO of New Writing North, said:
“Our research shows that despite incredible success stories from these initiatives the class crisis continues to grow. There’s never been so much debate about class in the creative industries but nothing has changed and things are actually getting worse and inequality more entrenched, hence the need to make our own reality.
Talent is classless. Opportunity, however, is class-bound. The Bee is an urgent response to that.”
The Bee’s goal is to remove barriers faced by working-class writers establishing writing careers, by creating a new channel for their work; growing a readership for new work by working-class writers, and by establishing a home for creative conversations about working class life and writing.
The Bee is edited by Richard Benson, the former editor of iconic 80s and 90s magazine The Face, and supported by the British publishing house Faber, home to Sally Rooney, Simon Armitage, and Kazuo Ishiguro.
Visit us at https://thebeemagazine.com/