Romalyn Ante
Romalyn Ante is the co-founding editor of harana poetry, a magazine for poets who write in English as a second or parallel language. She was awarded the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship in 2021-2022, sits on the editorial board for Poetry London magazine, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her new collection is AGIMAT (Chatto).
What I’m looking for in a poem
I want to be surprised. I seek poems that resonate emotionally and challenge conventional ideas and perspectives. I appreciate originality alongside universal themes. I want to be excited by vivid imagery and a strong voice that invites the reader into a unique experience.
Words to my younger self
Keep playing out in the woods, on the streets. Keep showering in the rain with your friends, keep gathering on the terrace at night with your grandfather and siblings, sharing stories and songs. Keep the wonder, keep the grit, keep believing.
When I’m stuck…
I enjoy the moment.. or read.
My favourite read
So hard to answer! But I love Li-Young Lee’s poems and Bible stories.
Someone who has influenced me
My grandfather for all his stories of legends and myths. My mother, for her directness, linguistic mishaps, and funny and inspiring stories.
Best writing prompt
Set a timer for three minutes. The moment you put your pen to paper, do not lift it up until time’s up. Free-write and start with the word about the first thing you see around you.
What it feels like to see your words in the world
Liberating, exciting. It was as if suddenly the world had just become bigger yet warmer.
Leone Ross
Leone Ross is a short story writer, novelist and editor. Her fiction has been nominated for the Women’s Prize, the Goldsmiths award, the RSL Ondaatje award and the Edge Hill Prize, among others. In 2022, she won the Manchester Prize for Fiction for her short story, When We Went Gallivanting. The Guardian praised her ‘searing empathy’ and the Times Literary Supplement called her ‘a pointilliste, a master of detail…’ Ross has taught creative writing for 20 years, up to PhD level. Her most recent novel is This One Sky Day aka Popisho (Faber & Faber). Ross is the editor of Glimpse: A Black British Anthology of Speculative Fiction (2022, Peepal Tree Press).
What I’m looking for in a Short Story
Ironically, in fiction, I am looking for the truth. By which I mean the detail of your authenticity. Be bold and clear-eyed and unapologetic. Write stories that your close friends would recognise as yours. Whether quiet and spare or maximillist and colourful I would like to read stories that mean what they say. Don’t try to please me. Please yourself, first.
Words to my younger self
‘You were right, sweetie. You’re going to be telling stories all your life. You’re going to make people laugh and cry. And all your dreams and more are eventually going to come true.’
When I’m stuck…
I use the Pomodoro method, introduced to me by writer Louise Tondeur, which involves concentrating on the immediate writing task at hand for 25 minutes, and then taking a five minute break during which I meditate or dance or stretch. On bad days, I know that the most important thing is to ‘default to action’ – which means doing your own bare minimum. You know it’s a minimum because it doesn’t make you feel scared. I can always set myself the task of writing ten sentences. That always feels do-able. Then you tend to do more once you’re up and running.
Favourite read
At the moment I am having great fun with Julia Armfield’s Private Rites. She is such an incisive writer. But for comfort, I always turn back to Jean Toomer’s Cane and Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon.
Someone who has influenced me
Audre Lorde. Not only for her urgent writing on race, the body and the imperative of the erotic, but personally. I attended a residential workshop with her at about 19 in Trinidad. I would not be instructed. All I wanted to do was sit on the veranda looking down into the valley, and write. Audre not only forgave my rudeness, she defended me. ‘That is what she needs,’ I overheard her saying. I would go on to be mortified at the lost opportunity once I began to read her work. But in that time, she validated my creative impulse. She was such an organic educator.
Best writing prompt
I don’t know about best, but it’s a simple one I use to concentrate and clarify. It reduces pretension. It encourages precision.
Look out in front of you, and without embellishment, or trying to be clever, write five sentences: describing what you can see, smell, hear, taste and touch. Then add colour, if you haven’t already done so.
What it feels like to see your words in the world
There will never be anything better. Whether it’s a public reading, seeing my books in stores, or best of all, getting a note from a reader to say the work meant something to them, it never stops feeling magical.
Toby Litt
Toby Litt is a writer, academic and activist. He has published novels, short story collections, non-fiction and poems. His most recent book is A Writer’s Diary (Galley Beggar, 2023) – and his continuation of the diary is one of the most popular writing newsletters on Substack. His story The Retreat won the Short Fiction/University of Essex Prize. He is a member of English Pen and editor of the Writers Rebel website. The recent Netflix 8-part series Dead Boy Detectives was based on Toby’s run on the comic of the same name. He is Head of Creative Writing at the University of Southampton.
What I’m looking for in Flash Fiction
I want to read a story that makes me want to reread it immediately. I want to be surprised by its inevitability, even though the first time through I couldn’t have predicted where it was going. And most of all, I want to have been made to care. Those are the qualities of a winning story.
Words to my younger self
Although I know it’s really frustrating when someone gives you advice and encouragement rather than a prize or a publishing contract, you should realise they are doing their best to help you along. They see something in you – perhaps something still forming – that’s the important thing. Take their engagement with you, even if it’s just a non-standard rejection, as a vote of confidence. And be open to learning all you can from what they say.
When I’m stuck…
I read generous writers – writers who seem to love people in general, rather than people who satisfy their grumpy aesthetic criteria. My favourite writer for unstucking myself is Walt Whitman. His openness to experience always makes me feel writing is a matter of adoring the world, however hateful it sometimes seems.
Favourite read
Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons) by Choderlos de Laclos – which is a truly adult book. Eternally naughty.
Someone who has influenced me
David Bowie – for teaching me that, for each new thing you do, you need to reinvent yourself as a person. At the very least, this keeps you alive to the possibilities of being other than you are. When he died, it hit me hard.
Best writing prompt
Two characters, A and B, are talking about what character C really thinks of character D. Of course, A and B must disagree. If you follow this prompt, you’re simultaneously learning about four characters, and creating narrative tension. Who is the closest to the truth? Are A and B both completely wrong? Yes!
What it feels like to see your words in the world
Still unbelievable. I publish a daily Substack A Writer’s Diary, and even though I can see the number of people who have read each entry, it still delights and amazes me when I meet someone who says they got something from it.
Claire Fuller
Claire Fuller is the author of five novels including the Costa Novel Award winning Unsettled Ground, also shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her latest novel is The Memory of Animals. Her debut Our Endless Numbered Days won the 2015 Desmond Elliott Prize. Her books have been translated into more than 20 languages. Claire also writes flash fiction and short stories, and many have been published. She has won the BBC Opening Lines short story competition and the Royal Academy / Pin Drop prize.
Instagram @writerclairefuller and www.clairefuller.co.uk
What I’m looking for in a novel
I’m hoping to read novels with strong stories, originality, characters I can believe in and exceptional prose. I’d like to be surprised, or made to laugh, or to cry, or to be terrified, in other words, give me the emotion.
Words to my younger self
Pay attention. Everything you’re experiencing now is likely to be used in the books you’ll write in the future. Response: Books! I’m going to write books?
When I’m stuck…
I read a brilliant novel written by someone else. It reminds me that this is what I’m trying to do.
My favourite read
Oh, so many. Most recently The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller and Idle Grounds by Krystelle Bamford. I write mini reviews of books I’ve loved on Instagram.
Someone who has influenced me
Shirley Jackson, novel writer.
Best writing prompt
Walk around where you live and take pictures of whatever you see, no matter how mundane (include people if possible). Even better if you can use the Hipstamatic app (free download ) on your phone. Print the pictures on small squares of photographic paper (optional). Don’t look at them for two months or even three. Shuffle them upside down. Pick one from the pack. Write.
What it feels like to see your words in the world
Like amazing telepathy: my brain in this room in Hampshire connects through some words on paper to someone else’s brain, maybe on the other side of the world.
Lemn Sissay
Lemn Sissay’s acclaimed memoir My Name Is Why was a number one Sunday Times bestseller and won the Indie Book Awards non-fiction prize. He is a memoirist, poet, playwright and broadcaster, performing throughout the world. The BBC documentary about his life Imagine: The Memory of Me was nominated for a BAFTA award. His radio work has been nominated for Sony and Palm D’Ors. Lemn helped select the work for Hold Still a project spearheaded by The Princess of Wales which also became a Sunday Times bestseller. He was Chancellor of The University of Manchester from 2015 to 2022.
National Curriculum, care leavers and Christmas dinners
Lemn’s stage adaption of Benjamin Zephaniah’s Refugee Boy is on the national curriculum as a choice text, published by Oberon Books.
He started The Christmas Dinners in Manchester in 2013, a celebration for care leavers on Christmas Day. There are now Christmas Dinners across the country.
Lemn is trustee of The Foundling Museum and The Gold From The Stone Foundation. He is patron of The National Association for the Teaching of English. The University of Manchester runs The Lemn Sissay Law bursary. The University of Huddersfield runs the Lemn Sissay PhD scholarship for care leavers.
Actor Julie Hesmondhalgh read Lemn’s psychologists report for a court case he was bringing against the government in The report at the Royal Court which sold out in 24 hours and became national news. He later settled out of court with the government for critical mistakes in the first 18 years of his life.
Awards and honours
Lemn has been awarded honorary doctorates from the universities of Huddersfield, Manchester, Brunel, Kent, Essex and Leicester. He is visiting fellow at Jesus College Cambridge and a lifetime fellow of Mansfield College Oxford. He is honorary chair of creative writing at The University of Manchester. He received the special recognition award at Manchester Culture Awards. He is one of less than ten people requested to take the Freedom of The City of London whose alumni includes Nelson Mandela and King Charles.
What’s Lemn looking for in a memoir?
‘I want truth without the frills and imagination without boundaries.’
Find out more about Lemn Sissay
Go to Lemn’s website here
Twitter @lemnsissay
Instagram @sissaylemn
Photo credit: David Vintiner