New online platform launched to showcase Salford’s best student writing

Salford Writers is an attractive publication in the form of a downloadable flipbook that will feature the best submitted work of our English students. It features on a wider website that will include spotlight interviews with agents and publishers from the literary industry and blogs from our students on their work placements during their studies.

The first edition, features poems, novel and story extracts, blogs, memoirs and a book review.

The project is the brainchild of Dr Emma Barnes, Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century and World Literature and Knowledge Exchange Fellow and David Savill, Senior Lecturer and Creative Writing programme leader, who wanted an online platform to showcase the work of Salford students to a broader audience and increase their employability prospects.

David said: “I’ve always wanted an online publication to showcase our students’ work and this hub will do that as well as bringing the eyes of industry to what our students are doing alongside their writing, therefore increasing their employability prospects.

“As we are publishing the best work, students have been immediately interested in it and it has really added a competitive edge to their writing. It’s motivating them to achieve more in their assessments as they know their work will be published.”

Emma said: “During their time with us, our students are constantly trying to build up their confidence as they aspire to go on to become published writers. I wanted a platform that would help with their confidence, show them what it means to submit their work for publishing and then have that feeling of seeing it out there in public.

“It’s a great learning experience for them as well as they have to work with us as their editors to get an understanding of how the publishing industry works whilst also getting that one-to-one guidance that we can offer as their tutors.”

The publishing industry continues to rapidly change in an ever-changing online environment with some houses only publishing in e-book form as some writers never see their work published in a physical book but still achieve great success through digital sales and consumption.

David said that Salford Writers shows that the University is adapting to these trends and providing the platform for our students to get their work out there in e-book form. It is also a long-term ambition from the pair that editorial control of the website and its content will be handed over to postgraduate students to give them a real-world experience of the publishing industry.

Emma highlighted that the website is an example of the lengths to which Salford lecturers are going to help the students be more employable, adding: “Those from the publishing industry will be able to see from this website just how close the staff are to the student’s work and how committed we are to their futures by getting it out there where they can be spotted and build up their online profile.”