INTRO

We would like to introduce you to Squad 9, thirty-two writers who live, work or study in the north of England.

We have met them all properly now, most have been to a workshop led by combinations of the Core Team, and they are beginning to define their one-to-one relationships with Emma Adams, Jenn Ashworth, Malika Booker and Stevie Ronnie.

We are excited about working with them over the next two years and beyond. It is probably the most accented Squad we have recruited for some time.

We can already see exciting synergies to explore between Squad 9 writers and grads.

We have spotted trends and shared interests in Squad 9 which we can support to have a wider effect on the literature ecology.

As ever, we have new Squad writers who have not had much contact with writer development, as well as poets, prose writers, playwrights and film makers coming to us with experience, either from other writers groups and initiatives, or of getting on and doing things themselves.

Hopefully you will get to know them too as we report their exploits in our newsletter. If you don’t already receive it, sign up in the top left corner of this page (or at the bottom of the home page if you are on a mobile device.)

But for now, we have a special edition of PUSH, where we have kept the biographies deliberately brief, so you first get to know them through their writing.

 

Steve Dearden

Director, The Writing Squad

August 2019