Whatever you write, whether it is prose, poetry, performance, script, songs or those daft shapeless things that won't stop forming in your head, then we want to hear from you.

We want you to join The Writing Squad - a group of fifteen writers who are from, live, work or study in Yorkshire, aged between sixteen and twenty or thereabouts.

Anyone interested in the programme should contact Steve Dearden, as below.

Over the next two years the Squad will meet eight times to work with a Squad tutor, visiting writers and people from the publishing, broadcasting and film industries. In these sessions we will focus on basics of the writer's craft and the other skills you need to get your work out there. You will also have eight one to one sessions concentrating on your own work in progress.

Throughout the two years www.writingsquad.com will be your site with online workshops, a chance to create your own pages and keep in touch with other writers in the Squad.

The Squad is designed to fit in with whatever you are doing - studying, travelling, working or just wondering what to do next. We meet at Sheffield Hallam University, home of the North's premier Creative Writing MA, but we are an independent group and are not looking for qualifications, we're ooking for talent, promise - the writers of tomorrow.