Hello world!
Building a network for rural writers
Dialect is an inclusive literary development platform for rural writers. Our home is in Gloucestershire but we reach rural writers all over the UK and beyond. Dialect is here to develop talent, connect with communities and offer rural writers opportunities to share their work. Join us as we grow the network!
Our Story
Dialect launched quietly in July 2020 with an online Summer School of taster workshops. A programme of workshops around Stroud Book Festival followed, along with regular critique workshops, courses, a Writer In Residence scheme in partnership with Lake 32 and an Arts Council funded mentoring scheme. We are now offering regular courses focused on the craft of writing and immersive writing workshops in intriguing rural locations. Dialect is now a Community Interest Company, committed to investing in literature and author development. We have recently launched DIRT, a plantable ecopoetry press and Dialect Publishing, which provides a platform for collaborative work by writers who are multidisciplinary in their practice.
Ethos
Dialect speaks from the edges of things. We celebrate the remote and the pastoral, the mountains and hills, the woods and the wilderness, the coasts and waterways, but also the small town and its suburbs, the retail parks, verges, dual carriageways, wastelands, lay-bys, scrapyards, agricultural spaces, derelict mills, industrial estates, motorway services, recycling centres, the spaces and voices in-between.
Our Directors are JLM Morton and Emma Kernahan. DIRT's editor is Alice Willitts.
