Northwrite SF Writers

Header Northwrite SF

'It's your job as a writer to seek out harsh criticism - and learn from it.'- Paul Cornell

Northwrite SF is a group of speculative fiction writers writing short stories and novels for publication worldwide. Most of our members are published authors from across the northern half of Britain (mainly, but not exclusively, Yorkshire and Lancashire). Although we intend to stay small and select we welcome membership enquiries from published authors writing SF/F* (See below)

We meet in person four times a year at a point fairly central to our membership in the Huddersfield area. Most of our members are drawn from writers who have attended the Milford SF Writers' Conference, but this is not a prerequisite. During the Covid lockdowns we have been meeting online, on our regular dates, and some of our far flung members still attend via Zoom or Skype.

Schedule for 2025

Sun 26th January
Sun 27th April
Sun 27th July
Sun 26th October

We meet to crit each other's work and to discuss the nuts and bolts of writing speculative fiction, and of selling it on both sides of the Atlantic. The aim of the group is to provide social interaction as well as professional level critique delivered supportively. Thorough constructive criticism, delivered sensitively, is encouraged, sarcasm and/or ad-hominem attacks are not.

Critique sessions use the Milford method. Manuscripts for critique are delivered in advance (preferably at least 2 weeks before the meeting) by email. Word count for the submission is limited to 10,000 words and earlier delivery of longer pieces would be appreciated. Every person gets a timed four minute window to deliver a critique without interruption. (It can be shorter than four minutes, but shouldn't take longer.) When all the crits have been delivered the author gets uninterrupted right of reply, and then a general free-for-all discussion follows. There is no reading aloud. We are concerned with the words on the page not the ability of a person to enthrall an audience with their voice and presentation.

SF/F*
Speculative fiction includes science fiction and fantasy plus associated genres such as steampunk, horror (but not too much horror, please), alternate history and those stories harder to define that some people call slipstream, new-weird or just-plain-weird. Most of our writers write for an adult audience, but some write for children, YA and New Adult.