Sometimes it’s possible to feel downright powerless and disenfranchised by global events. I’ve been questioning what, if anything, I can do to resist the global swing to the right in politics and culture apart from what I do already (petitions, letters to MPs, sharing news). 

I’ve stood to be a councillor twice in my local area Mile End (for the Liberal Democrats). I help with a green group on our East London street that has installed a communal planter and planted several street trees, a little legacy. We welcomed a Ukrainian refugee into our home and helped him find his first job and get English classes, he moved into his own place ages ago and is now going on to university. I will continue to do what I can. 

But I’ve come to the conclusion that the way I should focus my energy is doing what I do best, writing and sharing the work of other writers. Writers may not any longer be the ‘unacknowledged legislators of the world’ but the way we create worlds that others can explore does mean we have the power to move them and sometimes that’s the most important power you can have. In dark times, it’s ideas and stories that give us hope. And when the world seems bent on chaos, madness and self-destruction, hope itself is in short supply. 

Our podcast Story Radio has continued to be a wonderful celebration of creativity and irrepressible ideas and I’d like to invite submissions from any writers among you on the theme of ‘The Library’ for our next Story Radio Salon on Monday 9th June at the Colony Room Green. Just submit your story via our website but put in your cover note that it’s for the Salon (and remember, you need to be available to read it live on the 9th in London!). 

Meanwhile, my short story ‘Giants’, about the destruction of the environment, which came third in the Olga Sinclair Prize, is now available for purchase on Amazon in their anthology, Thirteen Shades of Green. Do have a look if you’d like to support my work and that of the other prizewinners in the collection. It is on Kindle Unlimited too. It is essentially a love song to the landscape of California where I lived for two years, especially to redwood trees, the giants of the title. 

Recently, I saw one of those submission calls which make your heart beat a little faster, because it seems to be designed just for you… This one asked for ‘quiet horror’ and I sent my story in, as always steeling myself against rejection because this, unfortunately, usually is the way it ends. A fact of the writing life.

Instead, I had a wonderful and enthusiastic acceptance of my story, ‘Welcome Little Stranger’, and it is going to be published in an anthology this Autumn. More details to come soon! 

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