Writers' Newsletter
Issue #277
April 2026
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Peelhouse Press Launches as a New Boutique Imprint Focused on Artefact‑Quality Fantasy Books
firstwriter.com – Tuesday April 7, 2026
A new player has entered the small‑press landscape with a distinctly tactile vision. Peelhouse Press, a boutique imprint founded by fantasy author Michael S. Jackson, has officially launched with a mission to create books that feel less like mass‑market products and more like artefacts from the worlds they depict.
Jackson, best known for his epic fantasy series Ringlander, describes the imprint as a response to a growing appetite among readers for high‑quality, collectible physical editions. “Readers want books that feel special,” he has said in recent discussions about the project — books that justify their physical presence in an increasingly digital age.
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News |
Some of this month's news for writers from around the web.
Open Call: The Queen’s Commonwealth Writing Competition
www2.fundsforngos.org – Thursday April 16, 2026
The Royal Commonwealth Society Queen’s Commonwealth Writing Competition is a global platform for young writers aged 18 and under to showcase their creativity through essays, poetry, and storytelling. The competition introduces regional winners across five Commonwealth regions, followed by a global winner, ensuring diverse representation. It promotes creative expression, global dialogue, and youth engagement on important global issues.
What Is the Queen’s Commonwealth Writing Competition?
The Queen’s Commonwealth Writing Competition is a prestigious international contest organized by the Royal Commonwealth Society. It supports young writers from across the Commonwealth by providing a platform to express ideas, tell stories, and engage with global themes.
The competition encourages:
- Creative writing across multiple formats
- Youth participation in global conversations
- Diverse cultural perspectives and storytelling
Writers' Handbook 2027 - Out Now!
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Bloomsbury Reorganizes Its Global Publishing Business
publishersweekly.com – Wednesday April 15, 2026
After a five-year period from 2021 to 2025 in which U.K.-based Bloomsbury has seen sales double and profits soar 154%, the now £361 million ($484 million) publisher is streamlining its organization.
The publisher’s rapid growth has largely been driven by an aggressive acquisition policy that has seen Bloomsbury make 35 deals in the last five years that has raised the number of employees from 736 to 1,238.
Under the new structure, rather than operate with three major editorial divisions served by a global sales, marketing, and publicity division, Bloomsbury will operate in three vertical business units, with each unit operating with its own editorial, sales, marketing and publicity, rights, and audio functions reporting directly into the managing director of each.
The three new business units will be:
Bloomsbury Global Academic & Professional (A&P), which will be led by Jenny Ridout, whose responsibilities expand to include A&P sales, marketing and publicity, rights, and audio in the U.K., and the rest of world.
Tucker Carlson to launch publishing imprint with books by Russell Brand and Milo Yiannopoulos
theguardian.com – Tuesday April 14, 2026
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson is set to launch his own imprint and publish books by the likes of Russell Brand and “alt-right” commentator Milo Yiannopoulos.
The imprint, Tucker Carlson Books, will be part of the US-based publisher Skyhorse. “I think most people don’t read books anymore because they’re too absorbed in all the other available media,” said Carlson, according to the Wall Street Journal. He added that those who do “tend to be disproportionately influential in policy conversations and conversations about ideas”.
Among the titles set to be published by Carlson’s imprint is Brand’s How to Become a Christian in Seven Days, described by Skyhorse as a “testimony and guide to a timeless, yet zeitgeist-capturing, grounded, yet psychedelic encounter with Christ”.
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Listings |
A selection of the new listings added to firstwriter.com this month.
New Publisher Listing: House of Kel
firstwriter.com – Thursday April 9, 2026
Independent publisher specialising in finely crafted science fiction, fantasy and romantasy. Seeks imaginative, well‑developed manuscripts that explore journeys beyond the known. Focuses on elevating distinctive voices within speculative fiction and related genres.
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New Literary Agent Listing: Meredith Miller
firstwriter.com – Friday April 17, 2026
Handles adult fiction and nonfiction across a wide range of categories. Represents bestselling and award‑winning authors producing transportive fiction rooted in vivid settings and personal narratives, including dark or darkly humorous work about women challenging expectations, as well as contemporary novels exploring relationships, family dynamics, and coming of age. Seeks fiction with fearless voices, high‑concept ideas, and elements of thriller, speculative, or horror. Nonfiction interests include voice‑driven memoirs, narrative nonfiction that reads like fiction, social justice writing, cultural criticism, music and pop culture, elevated true crime, deep dives into unusual subjects, and essays examining race, class, and identity.
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New Magazine Listing: The Alchemy Spoon
firstwriter.com – Wednesday April 15, 2026
Publishes poems up to 40 lines and considers up to three pieces per submission, seeking unpublished work presented in a clear, standard format. Also considers essays on contemporary poetry topics by prior discussion, along with original artwork for covers and interior pages, favouring portrait‑orientated images or work suitable for cropping. Accepts up to three low‑resolution artwork samples in a single document, with higher‑resolution files requested upon acceptance. Invites recommendations of poetry collections and submissions of reviews. Poetry submissions accepted during specific windows only.
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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.
Screenplays Aren't Novels, So Stop Writing Them Like They Are
nofilmschool.com – Wednesday April 15, 2026
It is totally possible to move between writing screenplays and writing books, and many, many writers have done so. But to get good at it, you need to realize that the styles of writing are completely different, with different audiences and ultimately different uses.
If you've been a prose writer your whole life, don’t despair, and don't throw out everything you know. Your sense of rhythm and your ear for language will help you. But it serves you differently in film.
If you start your screenplay like you start your novel, there’s a chance no one will go past the first 10 pages. It applies both ways, too—if you try to write a book like a screenplay, the typical reader will be confused and wonder where all the internal stuff went.
Avery Dohrmann's recent video dives into the topic. He talks about these writing types being two entirely different sports, although they both use the same “ball.” Watch the full thing here.
Quick, Playful Writing Exercises for When You’re Feeling Stuck
electricliterature.com – Tuesday April 14, 2026
A student recently asked, looking at the bookshelf in my office, “How did all these people get from here to there? From words on a screen to bound on the shelf?” I started to give her practical advice about staying in the chair and reading the right novels, but that is only a small part of how a piece of art grows up.
We are not ever just writers—we are also sons and daughters of good parents and disappointing parents and we are partners who need to grab a quart of milk on the way home and parents who crawl into bed with the little ones late at night to admire them when they are still, even though we know we don’t have any tiredness to spare. We are students and teachers. We are readers, taking in the universes created by other minds. Our stories and poems and essays are written in and among and because of these moments. A scene is not only a moment on the page that takes place in space and time—the writing of that scene takes place in space and time too. I remember working on an especially dark section of my first novel, No One Is Here Except All of Us, in which the character based on my great-grandmother escapes pogroms by fleeing with her children into the Russian wilderness where she survives on tree bark, and it so happened that this writing day took place beside a swimming pool at a Southern California hotel where my father-in-law was staying while he visited us. I spent the morning in the shade surrounded by Disneyland-bound families and I wrote about starvation. You can’t see that in the pages, but the energy of that good, easy day provided an opposite to the story from the past and its fictional counterpart. That strange pairing was part of how I powered the writing.
We do not write outside of our lives or in spite of them, but because of them. Writers make a choice to carve out significant time—some squeeze writing in while a baby sleeps on their chest or during the lunch hour. Some dictate a story while driving to work. The walls of stuck-ness are easily built. Time is always short; fear is a capable bricklayer; self-doubt and envy can construct a windowless room in seconds. While I love encouragement and good cheer (can you see me waving my pom-poms? I am!), those are not enough to free us. What I believe in, what has worked for me over and over, is a repertoire of small, playful, and unintimidating experiments. Lots of them. A small choice is huge. So often you need a little light, some air, and a handle turns in your hand, you peek through to the next thing, and you’re back, you’re in, you’re running.
Too hot to handle? Why it’s time for straight male authors to rediscover sex
theguardian.com – Sunday April 12, 2026
It’s a high-wire act and the risk of an embarrassing failure can weigh heavily – but that’s no reason to avoid writing about sex, argues Black Bag author Luke Kennard
Are straight male writers scared of writing about sex? If you read modern fiction it’s hard to conclude otherwise. Maybe we’re worried that the very presence of a sex scene in our book would feel somehow exploitative or gratuitous. Or maybe we feel our gender has simply said enough on the subject so we should shut up.
Women writing about straight relationships don’t seem as nervous. In fact, sex is often a central element of narrative, and of nuanced portrayals of masculinity; from the slow-burn tenderness and awkwardness of intimacy in Sally Rooney’s work, to the surreal celebrations of and lamentations for the erotic in Diane Williams’s extraordinary short stories.
The Bad Sex in Fiction award wrapped up in 2019. It is not missed – for me, its offence was that it conflated comically bad writing about sex with great writing about sex that happened to be bad. Still, the funniest and most excruciating winners were straight men trying and failing to write sincerely and exuberantly about sex, and landing somewhere between the ludicrously metaphorical and the shoddily pornographic or exoticising. Past winners have included James Frey (“Blinding breathless shaking overwhelming exploding white God I cum inside her …”) and Didier Decoin (“Katsuro moaned as a bulge formed beneath the material of his kimono …”).
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