Volume 08, Chapter 10 | August 2021

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Image by Veronica Lissandrini

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Dear writers, readers and friends,

Rise, write and shine. Your August issue is here and isn’t it a beautiful one? With the help of my co-curator this month, Divya Ghelani, we showcase four women to watch: one artist and three writers, all with abundant talent. I was deeply moved by this month’s writing – actual tears in some cases – and I felt a kind of tectonic shift as I read them. I felt the impact of both excellent writing and work that speaks to the moment we are in. That combination is the dragon we chase at Visual Verse. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

Our writing prompt comes from Italian artist Veronica Lissandrini (https://veronicalissandrin.wixsite.com/portfolio) , whose work spans visual art and writing. She has a fierce manifesto on her website that centres many of the values we share: freedom, creativity, disruption, truth, community, joy and dream. Follow Veronica on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/iamverolix/) to see more of her fabulous work.

And now, our magnificent lead writers: On page 1, we welcome Amy Stewart who makes her Visual Verse debut with a brilliant piece, Luna. Amy is a writer living in York and she recently won the Word Factory Northern Apprentice Award (https://thewordfactory.tv/word-factory-apprentice-award-announcement-2021-22/) . She is currently researching a PhD at the University of Sheffield about female circus artists and the carnivalesque. Her short stories have been shortlisted for the 2021 Mairtin Crawford Award and the 2019 Bridport Prize. Amy’s work can be found in Test Signal (DeadInk Books/Bloomsbury, 2021), Ellipsis Zine, Bandit Fiction and the York Journal.

On page 2, we are thrilled to feature Avrina Prabala-Joslin (http://www.avrinajos.net) , one of our regular contributors whose talent shines brighter with every submission. Avrina is a South-Indian writer living in Berlin. Her short story She’s a Tank, a Battalion, a Banyan won the Short Fiction/University of Exeter International Short Story Prize 2021. Her works have been shortlisted for the Indiana Review Fiction Prize 2021, Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize 2021 and the Berlin Writing Prize 2019. She’s currently finishing a novel that follows a few nomads and we are very excited to read it.

Alaya Mays, on page 3, is a student at Western Washington University studying German and Creative Writing. She has been writing and performing her own spoken word poetry since she was 16. Alaya tells us she has a special love for calculus, sushi, and playing cards at brunch. Her first piece on Visual Verse was published when she was still in school and we are enamoured by her work: the style and maturity she already displays is something special. Watch this space.

My deepest gratitude to Divya Ghelani (https://www.divyaghelani.com/) who co-curated this month’s writers. Divya is a British-Indian writer living in Berlin. She holds and MA in Creative Writing from UAE and in 2016 she won an Apprenticeship at The Word Factory (http://www.thewordfactory.tv/site/divya-ghelani/) . (http://www.thewordfactory.tv/site/apprentice-scheme/the-workers/) That’s where we were introduced to Divya’s work and she was later featured in Volume 5, Chapter 3 (https://visualverse.org/submissions/the-peacock/) . Divya has also been published in the BareLit Anthology, Litro: India, Too Asian, Not Asian Enough, Radio 4 and many more. As it turns out, she can not only write herself, but also spot exciting talent in others. Thank you, Divya.

So, know what to do. Deliver us your dragons. We are looking for fresh, innovative, experimental writing between 50-500 words, in response to this image. Challenge yourself. Push your boundaries. Go beyond the literal. Write within an hour to conjure thoughts and ideas you didn’t know were in you.

The image is the starting point, the rest is up to you.
Kristen,
with Divya Ghelani and Team VV

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@visual_verse (https://twitter.com/visual_verse)
@DivyaGhelani (https://twitter.com/DivyaGhelani)
@AStewartWriter (https://twitter.com/astewartwriter)
@AvrinaJoslin (https://twitter.com/AvrinaJoslin)
@iamverolix (https://www.instagram.com/iamverolix) (Insta)

Volume 07, Chapter 05 | March 2020

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Image by Ryan McGuire

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Dear writers, readers and friends,

Spring has officially sprung and we are so excited about our March offering – a wonderful, whimsical image prompt and a tie-up with the acclaimed Galley Beggar Press (https://www.galleybeggar.co.uk/) Short Story Prize, 2020.

This is the fifth year of the prize, judged by Guardian theatre critic Arifa Akbar, writers Todd Ewen and Toby Litt and Sam Jordison and Eloise Millar, co-directors of Galley Beggar Press. From over 1000 entries, just three were shortlisted and we are very proud to present them here this month, writing new work especially for Visual Verse.

Feeling the spring vibes, we proffer some lightness via this quirky little image by photographer Ryan McGuire. Our lead writers have not disappointed in their responses.

First up, enjoy the work of the winner of the Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize 2020, Isha Karki (https://twitter.com/IshaKarki11) , who lives and writes in London. Isha is a 2019 Clarion West graduate and a London Writers Awardee. Her work has appeared in Lightspeed Magazine, The Good Journal, 3 of Cups Press, and has placed in the Brick Lane Book Shop Short Story Prize and London Short Story Prize.

On page two, we present Vijay Khurana (http://www.vijaykhurana.com) , whose stories have been shortlisted for the 2019 Bath Short Story Award, the 2019 I’ll Show You Mine sex-writing prize and, of course, this year’s Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize for which he was also longlisted the last year. His creative-critical project A Little Death, featuring parodies of James Joyce and others, is available at beyondcriticism.net (https://beyondcriticism.net/) . In 2014, his children’s chapter book, Regal Beagle, was published in Australia by Random House. He has an MFA from the University of East Anglia and currently lives in Berlin.

And on page 3, we have Susanna Gendall, a New Zealand writer currently based in Paris. Her work has appeared in Sport, JAAM, Takahē, The Spinoff, Landfall, Geometry and Ambit. She has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and her début collection is due to be published next year by Victoria University Press.

Congratulations to these three wonderful writers and to Galley Beggar Press for another successful year unearthing the best talent and celebrating the craft of short-form writing.

So, dear writers, over to you. Remember, we need your 50-500 words in response to the image, written in the space of one hour, submitted via the website (https://visualverse.org/submit/) by 15 March. We publish up to 100 of the best.

The image is the starting point, the text is up to you…
Preti, Kristen, Lucie and Luke

Connect with us
@visual_verse (https://twitter.com/visual_verse?lang=en)
@GalleyBeggars (https://twitter.com/galleybeggars)
@IshaKarki11 (https://twitter.com/IshaKarki11)
@vijaykhurana (https://twitter.com/vijaykhurana)

Find out more about the prize and read all the Galley Beggar Press 2020 Prize stories (https://www.galleybeggar.co.uk/short-story-prize-tc) .
Start Timer (https://vclock.com/timer/#countdown=01:00:00&enabled=0&seconds=3600&title=Visual+Verse%3A+One+image.+One+Hour.+50-500+Words.+)
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Volume 06, Chapter 12 | October 2019

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Image by Valérie Mannaerts/M Museum Leuven/Alexandra Colmenares.

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Dear writers, readers and friends,

Never have our bodies, minds and countries felt so under pressure and fragmented. Yet strangely, art that serves to reflect on that can be strangely healing, and indeed, community building. At Visual Verse we are all about community. So this month we bring you our very special edition of ‘recommend a writer’, where we have asked some of our dear lead contributors to call on a fellow writer they think we should publish. Our co-founders, Preti and Kristen, have put two forward as well.

Our community of wordsmiths is enriched by the creators of our visual prompts. This issue of Visual Verse is published in collaboration with M-Museum Leuven (https://www.mleuven.be/nl/content/home) in Belgium, who are hosting the 51st conference of the International Visual Literacy Association later this month. They have provided the arresting image for October – a work by Valérie Mannaerts (https://www.maniera.be/creators/12/valerie-mannaerts) , photographed by Alexandra Colmenares.

Our writer responses kick off with Sabeena Akhtar (https://twitter.com/pocobookreader?lang=en) , who Preti believes is ‘a writer and activist of rare talent and commitment.’ Sabeena is the editor of the anthology, Cut From The Same Cloth (https://unbound.com/books/cut-from-the-same-cloth/) , forthcoming from Unbound, a contributor to the 404 Ink title, We Shall Fight Until We Win (https://www.404ink.com/store/we-shall-fight-until-we-win) and the Saqi Books title, Smashing It (https://saqibooks.com/books/the-westbourne-press/smashing-it/) . She is the Festival Coordinator of Bare Lit (http://barelitfestival.com/) , and a co-founder of the Primadonna (https://www.primadonnafestival.com/) festival and Bare Lit Kids. She is co-writing a forthcoming children’s book on Islamophobia published by Hachette, and working on her debut novel.

Our page 2 writer – poet Holly Singlehurst (https://twitter.com/HJSinglehurst?lang=en) – was recommended by critically acclaimed poet Rishi Dastidar, one of our longest and most regular contributors. Rishi says: ‘Holly is a poet you might not have heard of yet – but you will. She tells us what it is like to be alive in the world right now, in ways that startle and reveal’. Holly graduated from Birmingham University with a Master’s in Creative Writing in 2016. She was shortlisted for the 2017 Bridport Prize, and was commended in the 2016 National Poetry Competition for her poem ‘Hiroshima, 1961’. Her poetry has appeared on And Other Poems (https://andotherpoems.com/) and her short fiction has been published in Banshee Magazine.

Niven Govinden, author of the 2019 Gordon Burn Prize shortlisted This Brutal House, recommended ‘the genius Stuart Evers (https://twitter.com/StuartEvers?lang=en) ,’ whose debut, Ten Stories About Smoking, won the London Book Award in 2011, and his highly acclaimed novel, If This is Home (https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/stuart-evers/if-this-is-home/9781447207634) , followed in 2012. Your Father Sends His Love (https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/stuart-evers/your-father-sends-his-love/9781447280583) was shortlisted for the 2016 Edge Hill Short Story Prize and a new novel will be published in 2020. In 2017, Evers won the Eccles British Library Writer’s Award – one of Europe’s richest prizes for a work in progress.

Finally, Kristen spotted the ‘fiercely imaginative and quirky’ work of Eileen McNulty-Holmes (https://twitter.com/eileenamholmes?lang=en) at a recent visual writing workshop, and immediately wanted to published them at Visual Verse. Eileen is an award-winning writer, award-nominated editor, an aspiring witch and a (semi-) professional plant person. They have been writing for money, attention, and “exposure” for the past 10 years. Their work has appeared in the likes of Femsplain (https://femsplain.com/) , DADDY Magazine (http://daddy.land/) , For Every Year and IRIS, as well as in multidisciplinary shows at galleries including Lage Egal and Mindscape Universe. Their stories often take place at the fringes of reality, in enclosed spaces or in the midst of terrible life decisions.

So as you sharpen your pencils, why not follow our lead and recommend us to a writer/friend? The image is the starting point, the text is up to you…

Kristen, Preti, Lucie and Luke

Connect with us
@visual_verse (https://thecurvedhouse.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=34f4a503c2c926849e17dcf6f&id=02acdc9fd3&e=c32c18dbf0)
@pocobookreader (https://twitter.com/pocobookreader)
@HJSinglehurst (https://twitter.com/HJSinglehurst)
@StuartEvers (https://twitter.com/stuartevers?lang=en)
@eileenamholmes (https://twitter.com/eileenamholmes?lang=en)
Start Timer (https://vclock.com/timer/#countdown=01:00:00&enabled=0&seconds=3600&title=Visual+Verse%3A+One+image.+One+Hour.+50-500+Words.+)
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Volume 05, Chapter 04 | February 2018

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Image by Daniel Frost

Dear writers, readers and friends,

Here ye: we are shakin’ things up and making some changes to how we accept and publish submissions. These changes are intended to improve the process for you, our beloved writers, and help us to manage the growth of Visual Verse (something that continues to amaze us).
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New Submission Guidelines:

Henceforth we will release a new image on the 1st of each calendar month (as we do now) and accept submissions up until the 15th of the month. We will publish up to 100 submissions over the course of the month, no more. The other rules remain the same: 50-500 words, written within an hour, in response to the image. The writing must be new and original. Read more about our publishing policy (https://visualverse.org/about-visual-verse/) on the website.

We are excited to see how these changes pan out over the coming months. Both the deadline and the cap on submissions mean that we can focus on publishing the best of what comes in and ensure that these pieces are showcased on the site while the issue is still live. Please let us know if you have any feedback, either now or in the future when the new rules are underway. Email us at visualverse@thecurvedhouse.com (mailto:mailto: visualverse@thecurvedhouse.com) anytime.
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And now, without further ado, we present this wonderful, whimsical painting by Daniel Frost, an artist and illustrator whose work we have admired for so many years. Do your eyes a favour and follow his Instagram: @danielfrostillustration (https://www.instagram.com/danielfrostillustration) .

Our lead response comes from Megan Hunter, a hugely talented writer who is fast building an impressive body of work. Megan was born in Manchester in 1984, and studied English Literature at Sussex and Cambridge. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and she was a finalist for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award. Her first book, The End We Start From, was published in 2017 in the UK, US, and Canada, and has been translated into seven languages. It was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the 2017 Books Are My Bag Readers Awards and is longlisted for the Aspen Words Prize.

Megan has a long-standing relationship with Visual Verse. She says:

I started writing pieces for Visual Verse a few years ago, before I’d had anything published. I was working in an office and the visual prompts were an ideal creative stimulus during my lunch hour! I found the process of responding to an image, particularly within a one hour time frame, gave a freedom to my work that was so important when figuring out what I wanted to write, and is still so useful now. I think Visual Verse was probably the first time I’d ever seen my name ‘in print’ online, and it’s a real honour to now be writing the lead piece.

We’re pretty chuffed about that.

On page 2 we feature Maisie Chan, a published writer from Birmingham who now lives in Glasgow. She was recently commissioned to write stories for the Human Values Foundation and has also been published in the Penguin decibel Anthology The Map of Me. Maisie won the BBC Writersroom Competition BBC Bites and was a finalist in the 2015 Creative Futures Literary Awards. During 2016-2017, she was chosen for the Megaphone – an Arts Council/Publisher’s Association project to mentor and develop BAME writers writing their first novel for children or teens. Maisie has taught creative writing to children and adults and was an Arvon tutor in 2009. She is working on her first novel for teens about a fifteen-year-old British Chinese girl whose grandfather has early-onset Alzheimers.

Our next writer, Melissa Fu, grew up in Northern New Mexico and currently lives in Cambridgeshire, UK. Her work appears in many journals including The Lonely Crowd, International Literature Showcase, Skin Deep, and The Nottingham Review. In 2017, she was the regional winner of Words and Women’s Prose Competition and one of four Apprentices with the London-based Word Factory.

And on page 4 we have Yen Ooi, one of our favourite publishing people and a regular Visual Verse contributor. Dirty diapers, science fiction, and CreateThinkDo (http://createthinkdo.com/) is about all Yen has time for nowadays, but she did manage to pen this little piece and connect our February issue to another dimension…
There it is, writers. Submit before 15th February and as always, enjoy the challenge. The image is the starting point, the text is up to you.

Kristen, Preti and Lucie

Find us on Twitter

@visual_verse (https://twitter.com/@visual_verse)
@meganfnhunter (https://twitter.com/meganfnhunter)
@MaisieWrites (https://twitter.com/@MaisieWrites)
@WritingCircles (https://twitter.com/WritingCircles)
@yenooi (https://twitter.com/@yenooi)

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Volume 04, Chapter 02 | December 2016

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Image by Julien Menier

Dear writers, readers and friends,

What a month it has been for this precious world. It is easy to feel helpless, but we have work to do. As writers and publishers it is our job to create the stories that will help to make sense of it all. It is our job to create the poetry that gives us meaning when meaning isn’t clear.

This month’s image came to us almost by accident and feels perfect for this confusing time. It seems to say: what is real, and what is not? Is it a fictional scene from a mystical film, or is it a very real moment between man and nature? The image is by Belgian photographer, Julien Menier (aka Lost Wanderer (http://julienmenier.photoshelter.com/index) ), who roams the world with little more than a bicycle, camera and tent, making photos that only a solitary wanderer can make. His work is full of empathy and that, dear friends, is just what we need right now.

Our headliner this month is Paris-based Adam Biles (https://twitter.com/adambiles) , author of Feeding Time (Galley Beggar Press) which was published in October this year. We’ve read this book and we can report that it’s a hilarious romp through… an old people’s home. A rare view into a space fiction doesn’t usually go. Here the inmates live in the past and the staff is trying to escape in any way they can. And with its Boys Own Adventure style, time slips and graphic (novel) insertions, there isn’t much else like this in bookshops now. Reviews have been outrageous and ecstatic, with the Guardian noting its ‘core of sadness’ and ‘glorious comic verve’, and praising Adam as a ‘megawatt talent.’ ‘Hurrah,’ as Dot, the lead character of Feeding Time might say.

We’re continuing the theme of empathy and social justice with work from Louisa Adjoa Parker (https://twitter.com/LouisaAdjoa) , a British writer of Ghanaian and English heritage who has lived in the rural West Country since she was thirteen. Louisa started writing to talk about the racism and domestic violence she experienced as a child and young woman. Her first poetry collection, Salt-sweat and Tears was published by Cinnamon Press in 2007. Cinnamon also published her poetry pamphlet Blinking in the Light in 2015. Louisa’s work has appeared in a range of publications, including The Forward Prize collection 2008, Envoi, Wasafiri and many more. She has also written articles for Gal-dem magazine. Louisa has been shortlisted by the Bridport Prize and Live Canon Competition, highly commended by the Forward Prize, and longlisted by the Mslexia Novel Competition. She is currently working on a first short story collection, novel and second full-length poetry collection, with
mentors Jan Fortune and Jacob Ross.

Our next piece comes from Khairani Barokka (http://khairanibarokka.com/) a writer, poet, artist, and PhD researcher in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths University, London. Before this, she was a New York University Tisch Departmental Fellow and Indonesia’s first Writer-In-Residence at Vermont Studio Center. Okka is the writer/performer/producer of Eve and Mary Are Having Coffee, Indonesia’s only Edinburgh Fringe representative in 2014; co-editor of HEAT: A Southeast Asian Urban Anthology (Buku Fixi, 2016); co-editor of Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches, 2017); writer-illustrator of Indigenous Species (Tilted Axis, 2016); and author of debut poetry collection Rope (Nine Arches, 2017). In 2014, UNFPA recognised her as an Indonesian Young Leader Driving Social Change for arts practice and research.

And our final gift of the season is by Amrou Al-Kadhi (http://www.amroualkadhi.com) , a writer, performer and a filmmaker. Amrou set up the musical comedy drag troupe Denim (http://www.denim-uk.com) whilst a student at Cambridge, which is now in its 6th year and touring around the country. This included a set with Florence and the Machine at Glastonbury the year that she headlined. Amrou is also a queer filmmaker, interested in using and subverting traditional film tropes to tell queer narratives in a way that is accessible. His first short Nightstand was executive produced by Stephen Fry and distributed by Peccadillo Pictures, and he currently has two features in development. Amrou is the co-writer and star of a comedy series about a second generation Egyptian drag queen in London, Nefertiti, currently in development with Big Talk Productions. Amrou is represented as a writer/performer/filmmaker by United Agents.

So dear writers, that is it for another temporal year. We wish you all seasons greetings, and looking forward to lots of early presents for you and us, an inbox full of your brilliant words. What more could we want?

The image is the starting point, the text is up to you.

Love,
Kristen and Preti

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