Issue One
Intro
Steve Dearden & Danny Broderick
Writing Squad writers’ work is out there in the world, in books, on stages, on TV, on radio, online, but we thought it was about time we had them at home too, so welcome to the first issue of PUSH, our quarterly platform of their work.
Cara Brennan was experiencing that what next? feeling writers often encounter after their first book (Destroyed Dresses) so we asked her to kick off our new venture by writing about the city she has made her home.
To complement Cara it felt natural to turn to two promising poets in the current Newcastle squad, Lewis Brown and Vivienne Burgess for poems in the second person, and thinking about cities took us to Josh Degenhardt from our North West Squad who has imagined a city which is actually a …. well read the first three sections of his novel.
Since we started out in 2001 we have grown from being a writer development programme into a community of creatives, whether that is work our writers generate themselves like the films here by Barnaby Callaby and Robert Corcoran, or work that we make together like A Leeds Seen: photographers Joe Stenson and Lizzie Coombes working with Squad grads Andrew Owen Cook, Barnaby Callaby, Gavin Hudson, Onyi Ekebuisi and Steph Webb for an installation at the Transform 2013 My City My Leeds Season.
Push to promote, push to open, we hope you enjoy this first selection.
Steve Dearden, Danny Broderick. June 2013