As Chair of Write Club I am always amazed by the absolute brilliance of our members, whether they are storytellers or poets or some kind of non-fiction specialists, there is always room for everyone in our spaces. What this means is we get to celebrate all kinds of landmarks with them. From a book or poem being published, to a children’s book launch, and from a competition won, to the latest in a series of anthologies that is being pulled together. All of these are a massive cause for joy for us all.
This April we are grateful to celebrate another launch, as some of our members have banded together with their cohort of master’s degree peers to produce the best new literary magazine ever. Makarelle. They look forward to sharing the launch issue with you all.
If you check out their website or social media, you can see ways to get your work showcased.
Cinnomen McGuigan
Chair of Write Club
Here they tell us a little bit about how they came about:
‘Shall we start an online literary magazine?’ said Dini.
That’s how it started, we were on a video call at our mini writing club, made up of people who had finished their OU Masters in Creative Writing and still wanted to get some feedback and support.
‘Yeah, OK then,’ we said, not really realising the amount of work and complexity of creating such a thing. We just thought it would be a great way to get our own stuff published!
We lost a couple of people at the beginning. It wasn’t surprising, we were all realising this was going to be a massive commitment. Yes, we’d got blogs and websites, but this was a whole new enterprise.
So, we were left with the three of us - Dini, Jane and Ruth. Three women who live at opposite ends of the country: Dini in Scotland, Jane in Brum and Ruth in Essex. I don’t think we could have been further away from each other if we tried.
Would we have done this if we weren’t in the midst of a pandemic? I don’t know. Would we have thought the distance between us was too much? Probably. But adversity makes strange bedfellows.
Without too much preamble we had our theme for our first issue, Coming Unravelled – due out on the 16th April – and a call out on social media for submissions. By then we had realised we wanted to expand the remit of the magazine to include visual arts.
We had a great response, with heaps of submissions of great writing, poetry and art. It was only then that it hit us: This might actually work.
All of us brushed off our Microsoft Publisher knowledge, allocated pieces to each other and started to put something together.
Several late nights and long video calls later we had our first draft of the magazine and it looked amazing.
Now we are at the tweaking stage. We want to make sure it is perfect for our readers.
We are exceptionally proud of it, each other and our contributors. We can’t wait to share it with everyone.
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