In around September of 2025, I joined the First Edition New Writing North Group for 18-25s. The group meets once a week and engages in a lot of writing activity, everything from sharing writing to improvised writing activities. It has been something I have sorely missed in my life and I really enjoy having a set few hours a week to think only about writing.
As a group, we also do projects, and for this first term (September-January), as a group we were the editing, design, and planning team for Scraps #2, a collection of writing by young Northern authors. This is continuing on from the launch of Scraps #1 in 2024, with this one being the 2025 edition. The theme for this one was ‘pushing boundaries’ in all its forms, and the original callout can be seen HERE.
As a group, we sifted through all of the submissions, discussed the ones we think best fit the theme, grouped pieces together based on what we wanted to include, worked with an amazing designer (Sally Pilkington) to design the collection and the individual artistic pieces for each submission we selected, planned the launch event, and even shared our own writing during the process. It was such a valuable experience, and as someone who has always had an anxiety fueled view of the selection process behind my submissions, it has made me see the really human aspect of it, and how a lot of the time it very much isn’t a reflection of a pieces quality, but of various other factors.
Once Scraps #2 is online I will add it here, but here is a photo of the front cover from the launch event (at 1B books in Newcastle, which was great)! I hope 2026 will be a year that produces more published writing for myself, and all being well this experience will improve the chances of that.
Don Brookes - Writings 