Click here to read Issue 1 of Write On! Magazine.
Published online in July 2013.
You’ve heard this a hundred times: the standard of submissions was very high. But it really was. Unexpectedly high. Unusually high: every magazine I’ve worked on has received submissions from new writers but overall the standard from young writers in the West Midlands was greater than any of those. I got pieces in from 12 year olds that were more professional than articles I’ve commissioned from adults.
I wanted to edit this magazine because I very much support what Writing West Midlands is doing with encouraging young writers. There was nothing like this when I was at school and I had teachers who actively discouraged me from writing. So to see what’s happening today and how much more encouraging and fostering it all is, I had to contribute. I just didn’t expect it to be this much fun.
I shouldn’t pick out particular pieces but I’m going to. Make sure you read Anand Singh-Nagra’s The Seven Dwarves (featuring Snow White): it’s a bitingly funny fairy tale with a very modern attitude. Keir Shearsmith has reimagined the entire First and Second World Wars as a kind of playground battle in WW1 and WW2. Nicole Allen’s Angel is a deliciously dark tale that draws you in tremendously. The list runs on: so many terrific pieces to read.
Then those are just the prose ones. In poetry, we have Eve Hodgson’s The Bridge where you will feel what it’s like to walk across one. Sonora Hills examines The Whys of a Child’s Innocent Mind with – no, it’d spoil it to tell you more.
Actually, I’m already spoiling the issue. Do read these but really just dive in. This issue has the best of the submissions I got from young West Midlands writers and I am very proud to be able to bring the very best of what they wrote.
Thanks to everyone for submitting and I must also thank Joanne Penn at Writing West Midlands for all her work on the issue. I just had to pick the best ones. It was easy.
William Gallagher Write On! Magazine Editor
To read the first issue of Write On! Magazine, please click Page 1 to go to the first page. To find pieces by certain authors, please visit the Contents page or the Contributors page.
Enjoy!