Writers' Newsletter
Issue #268
July 2025
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News |
Some of this month's news for writers from around the web.
Straight white author's career finally takes off after he tells woke publishers he's gender queer Nigerian
dailymail.co.uk – Thursday July 17, 2025
A poet said his career skyrocketed within the liberal literary scene by taking on minority personas to promote his work to publishers.
Aaron Barry, 29, of Vancouver, experienced the most success when he posed as writers with identities far from his own, even if the poems were blatantly 'trash.'
His reasoning behind the scheme was simple - to prove the poetry world is more concerned with writers' identities than the quality of their work.
'My thinking was that, if the industry - from small magazines to full-on publishing imprints - could get away with showing a clear preference toward certain groups and, in that same vein, a clear bias against other groups,' Barry began to DailyMail.com.
'Then there was nothing to say that such power couldn't be abused in the future, whether it be to adhere to shifting trends or politics, or to discriminate against additional demographics.
'Such treatment would leave writers in a state of peril and anxiety, forever having to look over their shoulders while navigating their careers.'
From 2023 to 2024, Barry had managed to fool 30 respected literary journals around the globe and got about 50 of his 'nonsensical' poems published.
He published dozens of pieces as Adele Nwankwo, a 'gender-fluid member of the Nigerian diaspora,' including one titled After Coming Out: A Wrestling Promo.'
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The Novelry Offers $100,000 Prize to Break Publishing Barriers
publishersweekly.com – Monday July 14, 2025
The Novelry, an online creative writing school founded by Booker Prize–longlisted author Louise Dean, has launched a $100,000 writing prize aimed at reaching writers outside traditional publishing circles. With submissions closing July 31, the Next Big Story competition has already received over 5,000 entries and expects to reach more than 10,000 total submissions. An entry requires the first 1,500 words of manuscript and a $15 admission fee, submitted through Submittable.
Dean said the competition aims to reach nontraditional writers. "What I'm really interested in is reaching people who would exclude themselves from writing way before they got to apply for scholarships and bursaries," she told PW. "These are the sort of people who would have been where I was and made the assumption that to be a writer, you've got to be clever or posh. I don't think I had those, therefore, I won't. But I discovered that in fact, you don't need either of those, and they can be quite detrimental."
The competition requires only the first three pages of a novel concept, an approach Dean said targets "real people who probably love really high drama, high concept things" and "probably heavy consumers of genre fiction."
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The Sunday Post short story writing competition is back for 2025
sundaypost.com – Sunday July 13, 2025
The word is out. The Sunday Post is on the hunt for Scotland’s best unpublished, amateur fiction writers and you may well be among them.
If you can spin a good yarn, if your imagination knows no bounds, if the characters in your head won’t rest until they’re on the page, then we want to hear from you.
Today The Sunday Post launches its hotly awaited annual Short Story Competition – the third since it began in 2023.
So popular was are the contests that the crème de la crème of Scotland’s writers – Sir Alexander McCall Smith, and Bloody Scotland festival founders Dr Alex Gray and Lin Anderson – are back to judge entries, along with The Sunday Post and P.S. magazine books editor and competition co-ordinator Sally McDonald.
So, if you’ve missed our previous contests, or entered and didn’t win, now is your chance.
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Writers' Handbook 2027 - Out Now!
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Listings |
A selection of the new listings added to firstwriter.com this month.
New Magazine Listing: Blackbox Manifold
firstwriter.com – Friday July 11, 2025
We welcome submissions of previously unpublished reviews, short essays, and poems, particularly poems with prose, narrative, or sequences in their sights, or poems with an environmental slant. We're particularly keen to have short essays on poetic sequences. We don’t accept work that is simultaneously being submitted elsewhere. Before sending us material, please familiarise yourself with the journal to see if your work will jostle well with the other texts we’ve published.
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New Literary Agent Listing: James Gill
firstwriter.com – Friday July 18, 2025
I am always on the look-out for the original and the excellent – whether in fiction or non-fiction. I’m drawn to real-life stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, and particularly to first-person books that shows us a life, or an occupation or situation that we don’t know about – a voice we haven’t heard before. In general, in a proposal or outline I am hoping to find originality and clarity of intent. I’m not normally excited by novels that are formally adventurous and daring, or self-consciously “literary fiction”, but I love a driving plot, a promising set-up and believable characters (those real-life stories again…).
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New Publisher Listing: Crowdbound
firstwriter.com – Thursday July 17, 2025
UK crowdfunding and crowdpublishing platform that exists to support books that cover important social or environmental themes, by authors who come from disadvantaged or under-represented backgrounds.
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| Click here for more of this month's new listings > |
Articles |
Some of this month's articles for writers from around the web.
6 Writing Tips From the Sci-Fi Legend Robert Heinlein
nofilmschool.com – Thursday July 17, 2025
For the sci-fi nerds, Robert A. Heinlein needs no introduction. He was one of the Big Three English sci-fi writers of the 20th century, alongside Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.
He was maybe not the finest sci-fi writer if you were looking for flowery language, but Heinlein was unparalleled at writing dystopian fiction that emphasized scientific accuracy. He connected with readers through his interpretation of the future, a dystopian yet symbolic vision that was both innovative and definitive.
In his lifetime, Heinlein wrote over 66 books and countless essays for science fiction magazines.
Starship Troopers (1959), Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966), and "The Green Hills of Earth" (1947) are just a few of his most notable works.
In this article, we have compiled some of the best writing tips by the “Dean of Science Fiction,” Robert A. Heinlein.
Stella women's literary prize picks battle with non-existent enemy as it fights 'male gender bias' in the book industry
skynews.com.au – Sunday July 13, 2025
Australia's 2026 Stella Prize - for women authors - includes a male judge.
If inclusivity is embraced to the extent that gender is no impediment to judging a gender-specific prize, then inclusivity has been rendered relativist to the extent of being just ideology with good branding.
Paradoxically, it would be considered insensitive, in the current climate, to allege that a male judge was hindering representation and the distinctive voice of dozens of prospective female judges, whose lived experience and perspectives as women might make them inherently more suitable as a judge of a literary prize from which men are exempt as entrants.
The Stella Prize claims to fight for gender equality.
The Stella website says it “takes an intersectional feminist approach to privilege and discrimination. We are committed to actively dismantling all structural barriers to inclusion for women and non-binary writers”.
This is a sociocultural delusion, ignoring that the publishing industry is disproportionately, almost overwhelmingly dominated by women - roughly 60 to 70 per cent of Australian novels published in recent years have been written by women.
The most up-to-date Lee & Low publishing survey found that 71 per cent of people in the US industry are women, including 74 per cent in editorial roles, 70 per cent of book reviewers, and 78 per cent of literary agents, with that number replicated in a scroll through the Australian Literary Agents Association website.
Writing Advice and Literary Wisdom from the Great E.B. White
lithub.com – Saturday July 12, 2025
E.B. White, beloved children’s author (Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, The Trumpet of the Swan), innovative and revered essayist, and co-editor of the indispensable The Elements of Style, celebrates a birthday today. He was born in Mount Vernon, New York, on July 11, 1899. A deeply private man, White, whose full name was Elwyn Brooks White (his Cornell University nickname was “Andy”), had an abiding love for nature and ecology, most evident in his children’s books and essays.
His first publication appeared in The New Yorker in 1925. He went on to become a contributing editor for the magazine in 1927; in this capacity he wrote over 1800 articles. He was credited by famed New Yorker editor William Shawn for inventing a new literary form—the magazine’s “Comment” essay: often personal, incorporating the writer’s first person experience, while also being critical and incisive, as well as accessible to a wide readership. E.B. White loved writing, and given his prolificacy across multiple genres, this versatile wordsmith had some sage advice when it came to craft. Here are some of his most interesting thoughts on writing, creativity, and the majesty of the written word.
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