Olivier Award winner Bola Agbaje’s debut play Gone Too Far is blistering, intense and demands your full attention, claims Joy Francis.
Time Out feature writer and reviewer Tamara Gausi offers some pointers to budding critics including how to cope with adverse reactions to your reviews.
The loss of one of her twin boys inspired holistic complementary therapist, artist and writer Hyacinth Myers to offer other parents a creative outlet. She highlights why.
Susan Yearwood has launched a new literacy agency. As one of a handful of UK-based black book agents she is on the look out for talented new voices.
Read the second and final part in our series - a week in the life of a budding writer - with our short story competition winners. This time it’s runner up Mahsuda Shah.
Meet Me in that Place
By Karen Plumb
Meet me in that place where only you and I can go;
Our lips join, skin and bodies mould
United in a haven of our own design.
Raw passion unleashed has freedom to explore;
Oh I need you inside, how much further before…
Our minds, hearts, all intimate parts melt:
To form a molten whole.
Time and time you have taken me to that place
To others, unknown and unseen
Leaving no trace when we go,
No one can tell where we’ve been.
Conspicuously we are hand in hand
Towards a path of discovery
That leads to each other’s secret space.
Higher and higher we climb ecstatic,
Harder and harder it is to come to the end
Taking turns to lead and then to follow
Intimacy, desire and obsession
Become our special friends.
That place is more familiar now.
Yet ag ain and ag ain, I am struck by how
You surprise me
With what you know:
A familiarity that breathes content.
No longer do we need to map directions;
Highlighting landmarks and beauty spots.
Together we have discovered new places of desire;
New heights to soar: unknown to us before.
And our bodies merged long ago too:
You are now part of me,
As I am part of you.
One Night Stand
By Nicola Greenwood
She had he
He had she
It was a bedtime story
Never to be read again
The Succulence of Fruit
By Louise Hercules
When I sealed you to my sequined breast
You bore right in and never left
For there you grazed across the core
In seasons four? Well, I’m not sure
But through every vacant pore you crept
To bind me tighter as I slept to dream of heaven scented flesh
Upon my own there you would rest
For days….nights….unhurried….still
Enough to cl aim the shattered will that lay in pieces at your feet
Perhaps it was a clear defeat
Complete annihilation of the soul?
Indeed, I still resolve into the bitter succulence that is…..
This unrelinquished bliss.
Paul Macey exposed the newspaper industry’s complicity in the sex trafficking industry. He explains why.
Joy Francis thanks R&B singer songwriter Estelle for speaking out about the lack of black British musicians being promoted.
Nicole Moore offers a do it yourself guide to getting your book noticed and sold in Kingston, Jamaica.
Paul Macey reveals what happens when young people are given the opportunity to tell their truth through their own media.
