Students crowdfund to launch writing anthology

An anthology of work by students on the University of Warwick's MA in Writing programme is to be launched next week, after students crowd-funded the £5,000 needed to publish the title.

The anthology – manifest: New writing from Warwick – features the work of 21 students on the Warwick MA in Writing and includes poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction, a mix of full stand-alone pieces and excerpts from longer works, and a foreword from novelist Gonzalo C Garcia. 

Students used the university's newly-launched crowdfunding platform, Spark, to recruit almost 100 ‘Friends of Manifest’ who each contributed towards the cost of publication and launch of the work. 

Manifest committee member and MA student Annie Garthwaite said: “Crowdfunding has allowed us to almost double our funding target and receive additional match funding from the university. That means we can invest not just in a launch event, but in an industry-wide promotional programme that will raise the profile of Warwick’s talented writers. The strength of response reveals a genuine appetite among readers for new writing that we hope the industry will respond to."

Work by 10 students will be featured in short readings at the launch at Waterstones Piccadilly on 13th June, including a novel that reinvents the story of Clytemnestra, the murderous wife of Agamemnon; a detective story featuring a female journalist breaking down stereotypes while investigating academic corruption; a novella that investigates the life changing impacts of the Coventry blitz for one young boy caught up in is aftermath and a young adult novel that deals with illness, first love and the film-making ambitions of its protagonist. The other tales include historical fiction revealing the life of Cecily Neville, the 15th century’s most powerful dynastic matriarch, mother of Edward IV and Richard III and short stories on love, loss, disability and local government created by writers from the UK, Italy and India.

The launch will be at Waterstones Piccadilly on Wednesday 13th June.

The project follows one by students from the University of Central Lancashire, who published a gothic thriller entiteld Cold Bath Street by A J Hartley in April. The book, described as a cross between The Hunger Games and Artemis Fowl, was the result of a collaboration between Hartley and student-led publishing house UCLan publishing.