WWW Newsletter 12/05/2017

Camps Coming Up

Our next camp due is Abbey Manor College in South London, which we are quite excited about.  Abbey Manor is a pupil referral unit, and is home to students who really can benefit from a different style of learning.

It’s great that we get to work with schools like Abbey Manor College and allow the students to have the fantastic experience that is a White Water Writers camp.

Diversity

The 2015 report: ‘Writing the Future: Black and Asian Writers and Publishers in the UK Market Place’ found that BAME authors were less likely to be published or have an agent and were pushed to have their characters match cultural stereotypes. The 2015 Diversity Baseline Survey Results found massive underreprestation for disability at all levels in the publishing industry, At the same time, writers are more likely to been privately educated and older.

We take the lack of diversity in novel writing seriously and we’re trying to make some changes at White Water Writers. When the project first started Joe choose the pen name ‘Tim Cooks’ because it was the first thing that came into his head when working on the TooManyCooks project.  However it’s time for a change so we’re moving to the much more neutral T.M. Cooks for all future novels.

Phoebe also did some virtual networking this week: reaching out to organisations involved in improving the diversity in publishing. The responses we have got back so far from the introductory emails we sent out have been really positive, which makes us think that perhaps White Water Writers could also do with connecting more with organisations aligned to our interests as well.

Stats and Figures

Our ambitious project to contact all of London’s state schools for the SHINE grant is starting to show fruit.  Here are our updated school stats for the week. Steadily going up as always!