How a writers' group began to change the world - Penny Rendall

How a writers' group began to change the world - Penny Rendall How a writers group began to change the world How a writers group began to change the world by Penny Rendall, Publisher, Tindal Street Press New writers from anywhere outside the charmed circle of the M25 find it hard to break into print. The view of London publishers, editors of anthologies and reviewers seems to be that regional writing is necessarily provincial and inconsequential (piddling even). Birmingham, in particular, is a literary desert. Even if anyone there could write, nothing they would say could be of any interest to cultured people south of Watford. Review a Brummie writers book? Waste of space, unless its David Lodge or Jim Crace. Spread your net for anthology contributors a little wider than your old Oxbridge friends and the people you meet at literary parties in London? Why bother? Its not as if theyve a shortage of usual suspects. There are honourable exceptions, among the literary magazines - London Magazine, Panurge (RIP), Sunk Island Review (RIP), Metropolitan (RIP) - but there arent many of those. What to do? Do it ourselves, was the answer. Get together, create our own literary scene, build our own clique that can share contacts, recommend agents, publish, force them to take notice. Its taken a long time, but its happening. This is the story of Tindal Street Fiction Group and how it changed the world (or at least that bit of it). In 1983, when Alan Mahar (now a published novelist) was writer in the community in inner-city Balsall Heath, working with children and pensioners, he also met a number of talented contemporary fiction writers from around Birmingham. He felt a serious support group focused on critical reading would benefit the professional development of all those with genuine ambition. He established the group, which still meets once a fortnight in the school from which it takes its name.