Newlook NWR - new opportunities for writers

Just had the proofs back from designer Rebecca from Mo Publications. Have gone for a new image to launch a new editorial approach. It looks really exciting and fresh, clearly flagging up new features as well as the revamped author and opinion slots. The latter is now called Pulp Fiction and has had its remit expanded to include what our writers have to say about the world at large, including mass- and new media, film, TV, music, genre titles - anything goes, as long as it's well expressed. The Rich Text column, meanwhile, looks at the business end of the books world. Another major new slot for new and existing potential contributors to consider is for a piece - story or nonfiction - commissioned in response to a classic of Welsh writing in English. This might be a new edition from a Library of Wales or Honno classic, for example, or a much-loved, out-of-print & bashed about copy you'd like to re-read and interpret creatively, with a contemporary twist. The piece will be illustrated by the marvellous young Jamie Hamley, who also provides the magazine's new column headers. Maria Donovan's story 'Slaughterhouse Field', a Holland-set modern gypsy tale, kicks off this series, and is a response to the ill-matched romance in Margiad Evans' novel Turf or Stone.

Highlights of the May issue now still at that delicate proof stage are Kirsti Bohata on rural gothic in Tristan Hughes’ novels (including his forthcoming Eye Lake); Dai George on the perils of interpreting Gwyn Thomas; Patrick McGuinness on portraying the passive witness in his Ceausescu-era debut novel, and newcomer AP Jones' satirical fiction of metrocentric egos in a small Welsh campus town. Finally, major prizewinners: poets Elyse Fenton and Hilary Menos, as well as novelist Roshi Fernando.

Submissions are always welcome but the usual advice applies to any author approaching a publisher: research before you send. Buy a copy, get a feel for it, work out what you might offer any particular slot in the mag. Sounds obvious but it doesn't always happen. Hope you like the new look!