Diversity and New Stories – subsidised Creative Writing Workshops for BAME writers

‘There are stories out there we aren’t hearing.’ (Kamila Shamsie)

There’s been much talk recently about diversity in publishing (viz: the lack of it), and many creative initiatives to rebalance the scales, from blogger Naomi Frisby’s #ReadDiverse2016 to essay collection The Good Immigrant (ed. Nikesh Shukla), crowdfunded in three days thanks to enormous popular support and a push from JK Rowling.

Design: Stuart Bache

There’s a basic sense of injustice here, of course: why should any good book go unpublished just because of the ethnicity of its author? But there’s also a huge loss to readers of every ethnicity: we’re all missing great stories.

So, Stephanie Butland and I asked: what could we do about this? We don’t agent books, or publish books. We’re not literary editors on national papers. But we do teach Creative Writing workshops – good ones, we think. The writers we teach get a leg-up in their work.

Which is why, for the Creative Writing workshops we’re holding in Birmingham next month (link here) we’re offering four heavily-subsidised places for BAME writers: £50 instead of the standard £175. There are two going on Friday 13^th (Shape, Structure and Flow) and two on Saturday 14^th (Character-Building).

To apply, just send Shelley an email on shelleywriter@outlook.com, saying which workshop you’d like to be considered for, what you’re working on, and how the workshop would make a difference to your writing.

The deadline’s April 15^th – we’re really looking forward to hearing some new stories!