Here is the latest newsletter for my followers to peruse:
News from New Writing North: 28 August 2026
Full Durham Book Festival 2026 programme now on sale
Durham Book Festival is back from 9-11 October for a packed weekend of books and ideas. We'll be joined by Christopher Eccleston, Susanna Clarke, Sophie Irwin, Lucy Foley, Sufiyaan Salam, Neil Tennant, Hollie McNish, James Marriott and many more fantastic voices forged in the North and beyond.
Whether you love music and poetry, fantasy and gaming, crime and Regency romance, life writing and local stories, or something else entirely, we've got you covered.
Join our Script Hubs
In partnership with Channel 4, our Script Hubs provide six months of peer support, networking and professional development to writers looking to take their career in TV forward. We currently have two new Script Hubs open for applications:
- The Newcastle-based Script Hub, run by writer Rebecca Glendenning-Laycock, for neurodivergent TV scriptwriters.
- The Darlington-based Script Hub, run by writer Gavin Williams, focusing on writing genre TV.
Deadline 1 September.
Festivals and Events Volunteers
Are you an enthusiastic reader looking for experience working events? Or maybe you’re interested in charity volunteering? Apply to join our pool of volunteers to receive training and opportunities to help behind the scenes at literary events throughout the year, beginning with Durham Book Festival this October. Deadline 11 September.
Durham Readers-in-Residence vacancies
We’re recruiting two Readers-in-Residence to plan and deliver sessions in community settings in County Durham, using our Durham Book Festival Big Read and Little Read to promote reading for pleasure. We’re looking for confident, creative and skilled facilitators who are experienced in working with communities, children or families. Deadline 2 September.
Creative Family Groups Lead Writer vacancy
We’re also recruiting a Lead Writer for our three Creative Family Group programmes in primary schools in Gateshead and Newcastle. The selected writer will be working with local families to encourage creativity and improve literacy in a supportive and inclusive environment. We’re looking for a writer or artist who has experience working with children and adults on creative writing projects and who has a good understanding of inclusive engagement practice.
Adapt 2026 writers announced
Three writers in the North East have been selected for the third year of our Adapt programme to receive support to adapt their own work for the screen. Congratulations to Sam Honour, Lee Mattinson and Afidi Nomo, who will receive 1-2-1 script development support, participate in workshops, and have their work read through with actors at an industry feedback session.
Last chance to submit work to Scraps
Our First Edition group are looking forward to reading through submissions for the third edition of the Scraps anthology, and there’s still a few days to get your work in if you haven’t already. Northern writers aged 18-30 can submit new short work on the theme of ‘transformations’ by 31 August.
“Having been on the other side of the submission process, we understood how difficult it is to put yourself out there, so we were equally inspired and daunted by the task of sifting through our peers’ work.” – read this blog post to hear from First Edition about the behind-the-scenes process of putting together Scraps one and two.
Author events at Culture House Sunderland
To celebrate the opening of the brand-new Culture House, we’re bringing brilliant authors to Sunderland over the next few months. At our Northern Bookshelf Live Readers Day on Saturday 19 September, Robert Rutherford and Sarah Mellor will discuss their Northern crime novels, followed by a talk from Brian Groom about his colourful history of the British Isles. Come and spend a relaxed few hours in the building just a week after it opens, meeting authors and other Sunderland booklovers.
Then on Thursday 19 November we’ll be joined by bestselling novelist Adele Parks, and on Thursday 11 February by crime-writing legend and Vera creator Ann Cleeves.
Start Writing in libraries
Our Start Writing library courses are back! Each course consists of six weeks of 90-minute workshops to help you hone your craft or pick up the pen for the first time. Join us at Prudhoe Library from 18 September to explore different genres including poetry, prose and scriptwriting with Susannah Ronnie, or come to Newcastle City Library from 28 September to explore writing Young Adult fiction with Bridget Hamilton.
Naomi Kelsey: Othello Reimagined
Celebrate Northern Stage’s new co-production of Othello with a book talk from Northern Writers’ Award-winning novelist Naomi Kelsey. Her new novel, Pale Mistress, brings a bold reimagining of Shakespeare’s tragic story of ambition, lust, betrayal and power – told through the eyes of Othello’s only female survivor, Bianca. Naomi is heading to Newcastle’s Northern Stage on Saturday 12 September.
New Significant Ink workshops coming soon
As part of our Significant Ink programme, we’re running a free poetry workshop and a free scriptwriting workshop in and around Newcastle in mid-September, open to anyone who is a member of the Global Majority. Details to be confirmed, follow NWN on Eventbrite to be notified when you can book your place.
From our friends at Novo Theatre, Salt and Smoke: Stories of Blyth returns this September
Salt & Smoke is a 75-minute theatrical adventure through the stories and streets that have shaped Blyth. A leap into the unknown that weaves audiences though hidden and unfamiliar parts of town to encounter stories inspired by 500 years of Blyth’s history. These stories include those of Blyth-born sea captain William Smith, whose discovery of Antarctica was dismissed by the upper classes on his return, and salt-worker Martha Salyer who regales tales from Blyth's booming salt trade of the 1700s.
People, publishers, and podcasts
The Dens is the new pamphlet from Middlesbrough-based poet Michael Brown, published by Blueprint Poetry. This collection is a delicate and atmospheric account of emerging masculinity, the meaning of home, and fatherhood. Email blueprintpoetry@gmail.com for a copy.
Earlier this year, Blueprint Poetry also published Borderlands by Cumbrian born poet MW Bewick. Borderlands explores the shifting dividing lines between places, people, emotion and intellect, thought and language.
Prize-winning poet Lesley Mountain’s debut collection, Still, life, was recently published by Mudfog Press. Her poems highlight the magnificence and variety of the natural world, using a range of voice and metaphors from fairy tales, familiar phrases, popular music and the Weardale landscape. Contact Mudfog Press for a copy.
Competitions, awards, and submission opportunities
The Squat Pen Rests is a short story competition sponsored by the Royal Society of Literature, offering cash prizes to six finalists alongside the chance to read at the Squat Pen Rests Short Story Writing Championship of the World event in Swindon. Entry fee £5, deadline 31 August.
SI Leeds Literary Prize are looking for volunteer readers to judge the 2026 SI Readers’ Choice Award. Readers will choose their favourite from six shortlisted manuscripts by UK-based Black and Asian women writers, with reading taking place from late September to mid-November. Deadline 4 September.
Sketch for Sammy invites submissions of 5-minute sketches from aspiring comedy writers in the North East. Six finalists will have their work professionally performed to a live audience, and one winner will receive the prestigious Clement and La Frenais Comedy Award. Deadline 12 September.
Screen Crafts & Digital Skills Bootcamp for York and North Yorkshire is a free, 4-week, part-time programme to give people the opportunity to explore the essential craft and digital skills required for today’s screen and creative industries, open to aspiring content creators, filmmakers, freelancers and creative entrepreneurs. Deadline 21 September.
The Fieldnotes Folio Prize awards two unpublished writers £1,000 each for innovative and ambitious new work in all forms and styles. This award will launch a new publishing imprint – Fieldnotes Folios – with winning entries receiving structured editorial development before being printed as a standalone publication. Entry fee £6, deadline 11 November.
Freelance opportunities and jobs
The Story Den Project is looking for two Lead Authors and a Co-Creation Facilitator to create new audio story installations with children aged 7-11 in Wigan and Leigh, Greater Manchester. The audio stories will have a focus on the climate crisis, nature and British wildlife, offering paths to a more sustainable future. Deadline 1 September.
Helix Arts seeks North East and Cumbria based community artists, creatives and makers to deliver The People’s Tree, an ambitious collaborative project combining public participation, sound, architecture and storytelling to respond to the loss of the much-loved Sycamore Gap tree. Deadline 10 September.
Workshops, courses, and events
Join David Mark at Morpeth library this September for a Reading Round workshop with the Royal Literary Fund. In a twist on conventional book clubs, group members will gather to have a short story and a poem read to them, then put under the microscope through engaged discussion. Free to attend and open to literary aficionados and novices alike.
Spend a month this September exploring the radical, political and subversive nature of stories with this year’s Writers’ HQ Writing as Resistance Festival. The theme is ‘Here Where We Live’, an exploration of what home means and how we write it. Join live online workshops and write-alongs and read essays and courses on the theme.
Join Newcastle University Poetry MA graduates Kate Boston-Williams, Elaine Cusack, Tallulah Howarth and Greg Freeman for It’s Alright MA, we’re still writing, an afternoon of poetry and reflection on shared experiences of returning to academia, at North Shields Library on 5 September.
On 13 September, Durham-based author Sam Szanto is running a half-day workshop for the Poetry School on Loss and Connection: Absence and Attachment in the Poetry of Parenthood. The workshop will generate poems on being and having a parent, in a range of forms and styles from the golden shovel to the abecedarian.
BBC’s Contains Strong Language festival is heading to Salford for its landmark 10th anniversary. From 24-27 September, see some of the UK’s most celebrated poets, performers and broadcasters, including John Cooper Clarke, Jackie Kay, Joelle Taylor, Len Pennie, Jason Allen-Paisant and Andrew McMillan, alongside rising talent from Manchester, Salford and across the UK.
The Newcastle Poetry Festival is coming to the city from 2-3 October to read, run workshops and share conversations about poetry. The 2026 Festival ‘Re-inventing North’ features Northern Writers’ Award-winners Grainne O’Hare and John Challis, and Jerwood Fellow Kym Deyn, alongside many more poets from the North and the rest of the world.
The Mourning Pages is an online programme designed to help you recover and rejuvenate after completing a big creative project, or when you feel creatively spent and burned out. Join from 2-30 November to find restoration and nourishment in the fallow times, led by poets Ciarán Hodgers and Tina Sederholm.
If you have news that you would like to be considered for inclusion in the newsletter please contact carys@newwritingnorth.com. The deadline for receipt of information for the next newsletter is 21 September 2026.
While every effort has been made to ensure that the information contained in this newsletter is correct at the time of going to press, things do change, frequently at the last minute and very often without our knowledge.
No comments:
Post a Comment