LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
We want to hear your news and views on the writing world, your advice for fellow writers – and don’t forget to tell us what you would like to see featured in a future issue…
Write to: Letters to the editor, Writing Magazine, Warners Group Publications plc, 5th Floor, 31-32 Park Row, Leeds LS1 5JD; email: letters@writersnews.co.uk. (Include your name and address when emailing letters. Ensure all letters, a maximum of 250 words, are exclusive to Writing Magazine. Letters may be edited.) When referring to previous articles/letters, please state month of publication and page number.
STAR LETTER
Raise our voices
When I read Nicola Solomons’ Writers’ Voice article (WM, Sept) about the severe restrictions facing writers in Belarus, I remembered reading Farewell Kabul by Christina Lamb and the chapter entitled Death of a Poet. In the power vacuum left by the collapse of the Taliban, women in Afghanistan have found their movements increasingly restricted and those who wish to write or pursue careers do so while facing threats of extreme violence.
I have become more politically aware since I have had a child and as writers we are encouraged to find our voice, to infuse our writing with a personal signature. I don’t know if I have found mine yet but I feel an urgent need to incorporate political issues into my storytelling. I struggle with maintaining a workable balance between preachiness and fluff but I urge more writers to charge their fiction with real-world issues. In the UK we can write and publish with great freedom. The opportunity is there to make a diTherence in the world but we may not always have an open window.
NATALIE JORDAN Dagenham, Essex
The star letter each month earns a copy of the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook 2018, courtesy of Bloomsbury, www.writersandartists.co.uk