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We are delighted to announce that we now have an online community for our Black women writers. This idea has been in the making for a little while now.

The intention is for this to be a supportive community writing community created by and for Black women who are passionate about telling our stories. While poetry is at the heart of what we do, we celebrate all genres: fiction, memoir, essays, journaling, and beyond.

Whether you’re a seasoned writer or just starting to put words on the page, you belong here. We’re not experts, we’re everyday women who love to write, share, and grow together.

This space is about encouragement, creativity, and connection. You don’t need to be working on a book or aiming for publication. If you enjoy writing, especially poetry and short stories, and want a welcoming circle of fellow Black women writers, you’re in the right place.

Our mission is simple: to nurture the voices of Black women, to honour our lived experiences through writing, and to hold space for each other as we create, reflect, and share.

Come as you are. Bring your words. Let’s write our truths together.

Follow this link to find out more https://www.skool.com/paper-and-pen-5057

We are delighted to share with you the results of this year’s Leicester Women’s Poetry Competition 2021.
We started this competition in 2019 with the intention that it would become an annual event. However, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns meant that we’ve been unable to run it again until this year.

The poetry competition started to do two main things:

1. Encourage black women to write, and
2. Celebrate Black History Month which is celebrated in October here in the UK

In our first year, we received a modest number of submissions and that was great. This year the number of submissions has more than doubled with 22 in total. This is exciting for us as it clearly indicates that the news is getting out there. It has been wonderful to read through the poems. The difficulty for our judges has been in deciding on a winner and a runner-up.

In addition this year, we were excited to have received submissions from younger writers. We understand that the competition has been picked up by my schools via our partnership with Marcia Brown, Service Delivery Manager, the Leicester City Council.

We wish to thank every person who took the time to share their work with us and who had the courage to submit poems for this competition.

The number of authors recognised this year has been expanded, as we really want to encourage women and girls to write and share their work.

Here is the list of Winners:

• Winner: Carolyn Turner with her poem titled ‘Chained’
• Runner-up: Nusrat M Haider with her poem ‘Black, British and Proud!’

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Poems recognised as having merit:

• Ananya Ganesh (10yrs) with her poem ‘These Black Women’
• Valerie Walbrook with her poem ‘Mamma Life is a Struggle’
• Adesola Adesoakn with her poem ‘Chimamanda Adichie’
• Rehana Sidat with her poem ‘Superwoman’
• Indy Samra with her poem ‘Mother Tongue, Maa Boli’

The presentation event which took place again this year at the African Caribbean Centre in Leicester, saw authors who were able to attend, reading out their poems and sharing some background to their piece with the audience.

Congratulations to all the winners.

Thank you to everyone who made a submission.

We will be sharing some of the winning poems over the next few weeks, so do keep dropping by so that you don’t miss them.