Regional Development Agencies 

Regional Development Agencies passionately contribute to the local writing scene around England. With fervent dedication to regional writers, their ‘directory’ pages offer a platform to help people garner a national presence. For people struggling to find local events they can access the ‘events’ page on each site and immediately be deluged with possibilities.  It is the ideal place to begin for a young writer wanting to find ways to fuel their interest. Below are a list of the main agencies in Britain, along with their Twitter usernames:

Writing East Midlands @WritingEM
Writing West Midlands @writingwestmids
Writer’s Centre Norwich  @WritersCentre
Creative North Yorkshire @creativeyork
Cyprus Well @CyprusWell
New Writing North @NewWritingNorth
New Writing South @newwritingsouth

Poetry Society @PoetrySociety

This efficiently designed site displays information on recent events, news as well as displaying up and coming poets. The site encourages a poetic community on a national scale to offer support and help in writing. Users can become members and profit from exclusive competitions, reviews and helpful advice in the poetry clinic.

Twitter

Unlike many other social media sites, Twitter does not hold just one function. Instead, it can be adapted to suit a range of needs. Growing out of this blank slate of a website is a healthy writing community that offers literary emagazines a place to develop a social presence. There are many literary emagazines out there that are constantly looking out for new writing talent and encourage submissions. As a result of this, Twitter is an ideal place to find (ideally free) writing competitions to provide you the necessary incentive to finish that piece of fiction you’ve been procrastinating over. A couple accounts that are particularly beneficial are @WritersContests and @thenewwritermag – both regularly tweet about national writing competitions.

Booktrust  @Booktrust

Events, Resources and News, the Booktrust website is a home for aspiring writers. The UK website offers a range of links to provide essential information for writers.  Under the ‘Writing’ banner users can find a frequently updated list of writing competitions as well as writing advice for a range of genres. As displayed in the ‘Professionals’ section, the website is associated with a vast amount of respectable institutions and promotes opportunities for all writers. For inspiration the site also hosts regular interviews with important people in the literary field so users can get educated advice and opinions.

The Writer’s Hub @writershub

This sophisticatedly designed website presents a rich selection of poetry, news and reviews.  The Writer’s Hub subscribes to a magazine style approach to literary news and entertains the user whilst simultaneously offering resources and forums to aid a writers craft. It also boasts the Birkbeck Writing Programme which takes place in one of the University Colleges of London and situated near Bloomsbury.

The Young Poets Network @youngpoetsnet

As the name suggests, this website focuses on young writers and offers crucial information for their benefit. An affiliation of the Poetry Society, the Young Poets Network’s target demographic is teenagers, so for young adults the website may seem a bit incongruous. Despite this, the website does provide a perfect forum for young writers to exhibit their work whilst simultaneously learning about classic literature as well as contemporary poetry.

NAWE  @YoungWritersHub

Finally and unashamedly, the NAWE is a great website for young writers. Users of the NAWE site profit from an accessible and simple interface that equips a young writer with the essentials. For £20 users can become members and benefit from daily news updates concerning the issues that directly affects them. Along with news, members can also be the first to know about discounted upcoming events, competitions as well as jobs in the arts sector. The site provides the answers to the questions that all young writers want answering. NAWE understands the need to build a healthy writing community and through the ongoing support and editorial feedback that comes with membership, users can really develop a confident online presence. There is also the fantastic Myths of the Near Future publication that promotes work from young writers associated with NAWE.