What we’re about
Welcome to the Chalk Scribblers.
We’re an international online group, and occasionally a rabble, of writers working on improving our skills. We run two types of activity to help each other achieve that:
Our core activity is our Saturday critique workshop. Once a week, we get together to discuss a story or part of a larger work that one of us has written. We exchange our opinions in a frank but constructive way that helps to develop not only the work being discussed but also the writing skills of the people giving and receiving the critique.
Our speaker events usually happen on Wednesday evenings, although they’re often subject to when the speaker can make it. The format is that we ask people who can tell us something about writing and publishing that we don’t know. Sometimes they’re authors, sometimes they’re publishing professionals, sometimes they’re people with expertise that can come in useful for writers and sometimes they’re our own members whose successes we want to celebrate.
Most of our events are free to join although some of our speaker events have cover charges that go toward our overheads.
Our members cover a broad range of fiction, creative non-fiction and screenwriting. However, we’re not the best group for poetry, songwriting and game writing.
Our activities are based on reciprocity between peers. If you’re looking for something more structured, we suggest the Indie Novella 9-week course which runs three times per year: https://www.indienovella.co.uk/writing-course
The group’s organisational structure is described here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WuhkZbzYRSTnS8URRx0SVKnwbpl0Fw9KZ-Q1uSEC2s0/edit?usp=sharing
If you’d like to see what it’s all about, sign up for an event and jump in.
Follow us on Twitter at @ChalkScribes
Follow us on Bluesky at @chalkscribblers.bsky.social
Publications by Chalk Scribblers in 2023
This year’s big success story was the anthology All Tomorrow’s Futures: Fictions that Disrupt, published by Cybersalon and edited by a team that included Chalk Scribblers Wendy Grossman, Stephen Oram and Eva Pascoe.
Available in hardback, paperback and kindle from Amazon.
Reviewed by Mary Branscombe in Vector.
It contains stories from no less than six Chalk Scribblers members:
Alex Buxton contributed:
- Update Needed
DJ Cockburn contributed:
- Milton Friedman’s Heresy
Wendy Grossman contributed:
- ELIJAH
- Heritage
Stephen Oram contributed:
- Ego Statistical
- See Me
Eva Pascoe contributed:
- Swipe Right
- Journey to Brindisfarne Abbey
Prashant Vaze contributed:
- Daylight Robbery
Other publications by Chalk Scribblers this year were:
Hugh McCormack saw his debut fiction publication:
- The Tome of the Watermelon Harvest appeared in the winter 2024 Dragon Gems anthology.
Stephen Oram found some time to do something other than work on All Tomorrow’s Futures:
- Is the Future of Justice Free, Fair, and Flawless? is an article published in the British Science Fiction Association’s Focus magazine as part of their ‘The Shape of Things to Come’ series.
Reaghan Reilly graduated with an MLitt in creative writing from Glasgow University.
Ana Sun continues her run of success in the world of short fiction:
- The Perpetual Metamorphosis of Primrose Close is a novelette that was published in issue 11 of Parsec.
- Night Fowls was published in World Weaver Press’s Solarpunk Creatures anthology.
- Anatomy of Emotion – The Carving of Chance – Seize the Moon was published in Luna Press’s Utopia of Us anthology.
- A Book of Architecture and Other Music appeared in Air and Nothingness Press’s Fathoms in the Earth anthology.
- This God's Request is Off the Menu appeared in the Inter Librarian Loan (vol. 2) anthology, also by Air and Nothingness.
- A Spell for Stardust was published in New Mythologies in Space, a limited edition newsletter by Flame Tree Press for the 2024 WorldCon in Glasgow and is available online.
Prashant Vaze has had a successful year in both fiction and non-fiction. In addition to his publication in All Tomorrow’s Futures mentioned above, his other 2024 credits were:
- The Food Fighters was published by Anthropocene Magazine as part of their Climate Parables series.
- For the Common Good appeared in the Stories from the Microbial World anthology, published by Habitat Press.
- You Never Give Me Your Money – Funding the Energy Transition in the Global South is a non-fiction article published by the Greenhouse Think Tank.
Upcoming events (4+)
See all- Chalk Scribblers meet the publisher: The Slab PressLink visible for attendees
Donna Scott established The Slab Press in 2023, as a UK-based independent publisher of ‘books that are a little different from the norm’. Those ‘different’ books include novels and also anthologies, for which The Slab’s first call was posted last year. So far, the titles have oriented toward science fiction and fantasy but there’s no indication that they’re limited by genre.
In addition to running slab, Donna is a stand-up comedian and has a considerable amount of experience as an editor in all senses of the word, perhaps most notably as the editor of the long-running Best of British Science Fiction annual anthology.
Although there is no charge for the session, there is an attendee limit so if you find you can't make it, please remember to change your RSVP so someone else can take your place.
Relevant links:
The Slab website: https://theslab.press/
Donna’s website: https://donna-scott.co.uk/
Donna on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/wishusdonna.bsky.social
