The 26th edition of Spark Young Writers Magazine is out now. Published online in April 2023, the magazine features some of the best writing produced by children and young people aged 8 to 20 who live in the West Midlands region. Editor’s pick this issue is a piece by Doroti Polgar called 3am.
To read Issue 26, click here. To access it as a pdf, click here.
If you’re interested in submitting to the next issue, find out how here.
Letter from our Editor
The great and the very, very hard thing about Spark Young Writers’ Magazine is that there is no topic, no brief, and rarely a theme. Your piece will be considered whether it’s a story, a poem, a script, non-fiction, or a song, so long as it is fewer than 500 words long.
It’s a deliberate policy so that any writer can have free reign to write anything in any way — while still getting to experience what it’s like writing professionally for magazines. For as well as the deadline, there is also the fact that this time just slightly under half of all submissions were rejected.
Several of those were stories where something was too unclear, or there was clearly more that could be done. So as I’ve said to each of those writers, I hope they will resubmit their piece for a future issue.
There are times, though, when something is submitted and it’s so good, so right, that it goes straight in the issue. It’s a piece that goes straight into the issue but does not leave my head, that gets made the Editor’s Choice. This time it’s “3am” by Doroti Polgar.
I never know in advance if I’m to be the editor of the next issue, but it’s getting to read writing like this that will make me cross my fingers when the email comes in about Issue 27.
William Gallagher, editor