Applications for The Northern Short Story Festival Academy 2020 are now open!

The Northern Short Story Festival Academy is delighted to announce that applications to its Academy are now open! Over the last 2 years, the Academy has supported and developed 12 short story writers living in Yorkshire and is now on the search for its next intake. Are you a short story writer who wants to take your writing to the next level? Then the Academy could be for you!

The Northern Short Story Festival Academy is a development programme aimed at helping short story writers in Yorkshire take their writing to the next level. The scheme promotes writing excellence. Participants will join a monthly workshop critique group led by writer Anna Chilvers where they will read and critique each other’s stories. Our current Academicians include a Pushcart nominee, national prize winners, the winner of the Walter Swan Writing Prize, and a Best of British Short Stories anthology author.

It is free to apply, you must be aged 18 or over and resident in the Yorkshire region with some demonstrable evidence of your short story writing. Full details about how to apply can be found here.

Fiona Gell, Director of the Leeds Big Bookend and Northern Short Festival said, “We are excited to be able to support a new intake of short story writers to the Academy which exists to help writers develop their critical and professional skills and become better writers. Our current intake of 12 writers are proof that the Academy process works. We cannot wait to meet our new writers. We are very grateful to Arts@Leeds and Leeds City Council, and The Walter Swan Trust for their continued support. Without them, the Academy scheme would not exist.”

Niccola Swan, Chair of Trustees at The Walter Swan Trust said, “The Walter Swan Trust was set up to support new creative writers. The work of the Northern Short Story Festival and especially the Academy is exactly the sort of scheme we want to support. This is our fourth collaboration and we are very excited about it. Good luck to all the applicants.”

Academician Lizzie Hudson said, “The support I have received from the Northern Short Story Festival has been a big part of my development as a writer in the last two years. Anna Chilvers’ workshops were a really exciting and creative space in which to develop our practice, and the one-to-one mentorship I received through the scheme has also been very valuable. I still meet regularly with the writers from my critique group that formed as part of the Academy programme, and their critique and friendship has been great for the development of my writing. I encourage Yorkshire-based writers to apply!”

Image: Academicians at a showcase event for their work, 2019. Photo by Izzy Brittle.

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