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‘A poem is a closed fist’

From all of us at Mslexia, to all of you women writers out there: a poem about women’s writing for National Poetry Day

Do you have enough poems for a collection?

Pamphlet or full collection? Theme or no theme? Sophia Blackwell, author of The Poetry Writers’ Handbook, advises on how to gather your poems together for publication

Blurbology

The back-cover blurb is one of the most important factors influencing book buying. Anna Davis investigates the tricky art of hype and hot air

Teenage angst

Contemporary YA explores real-world issues through teenage characters. Laura Steven explains how best to tackle realism and darker themes.

‘I lay awake revisiting the creaky old house I'd lived in as a child’

The multi-award-winning children’s author Elizabeth Laird built her formidable reputation writing stories based on her research in far-away lands. But when Covid lockdowns put an end to her journeying, she travelled back in time instead, to turn her childhood memories into fiction.

20 Questions with Sara Barnard

In the run up to our competition for Children’s and YA novels, we caught up with YA-Book Prize-winning author Sara Barnard to see how she goes about writing her bestselling books. Key takeaways? Cut out distractions with rain sounds, and beat writer’s block by fast-forwarding to a different part of the story

A poem about boys

Poet, playwright and novelist Clare Pollard will be curating the poems and stories on the topic of ‘keys’ for the September edition of Mslexia. Her poem Pollen from Bad Lilies has just been shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem and her debut novel Delphi is out now. ‘Boys’ (below) is from her fifth full collection, Incarnation, which charts her experience of being the mother of a boy child.

Unlocking with left-hand writing

It might be slow and awkward but if you let your left hand do the writing, you may access parts of your mind that have not been freely active since you learned to read. Rosie Jackson explains

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