Voices

The Voices anthology was created to embrace all of the diversity and excitement that Blackburn has to offer. This collection comprises fiction, poetry and life-writing but definitions regardless, they are all stories about the town by people who have lived in, worked at and known it. Another aim of the anthology was to allow all types of writers to work together and to show that writing has a place in everyone’s life. You don’t have to consider yourself a writer to be able to write. You don’t need an MA in Creative Writing or to be a published novelist to see the positive impact of writing on your life. You don’t need permission. We can all write our stories and we all have something important to say, whether that’s our memories of growing up to pass on to our families, a best-selling novel or prize-winning poem, or observations for our own personal notebooks.

To that end, this collection will tell you all sorts of stories. It will take you from real-life reminiscences of growing up, to poetry describing the beautiful sites and memories – some tough and gritty – that Blackburn has given our writers, to current experiences of what life is like now.