30th Anniversary Emerging Writer Commissions

Three London-based emerging writers have been commissioned for the Emerging Writer Commissions, as part of our 30th anniversary celebrations. The commissions were judged by Joelle Taylor and Olumide Popoola.

These commissions aim to showcase new work by three London-based emerging writers, and provide a developmental and profile-raising opportunity. Three London-based deaf and disabled writers have also been commissioned for our Deaf and Disabled Writer Commissions.

These commissions mark the start of our 30th anniversary celebrations. We will be announcing further celebrations in the coming months. Sign up to our newsletter to hear what we have planned.

The 30th Anniversary Emerging Writer Commissions are generously supported by The London Community Foundation and Cockayne – Grants for the Arts.

About the commissions

Three writers have been commissioned to create a short original piece of written work. This work is entirely new, rather than a development of pre-existing work.

The commissions had an open brief and there is no theme which the work had to respond to. We invited our writers to be bold with their ideas, and encouragd them to experiment and take risks in their approach to style and content. Commissions could focus on individual interests and creative lines of enquiry that drew on history, looked to the future, or focused on the present.

Commissioned writers received mentoring and development support to realise their ideas. An access fund was in place to make reasonable adjustments for writers who required it.

The commission development period ran from November 2024 to February 2025. The commissioned work will be launched both in print and live at the 2025 Deptford Literature Festival on Saturday 29 March 2025.

Commissioned writers each received:

£2,000 commission fee
Three sessions with a mentor
One to one development support from Spread the Word
Publication of their work in the Deptford Literature Festival magazine
A platform to showcase their work to an audience at Deptford Literature Festival and online

Commissioned writers

Giselle Cory

Commissioned writer: Emerging Writer Commissions

Giselle Cory

Commissioned writer: Emerging Writer Commissions

Giselle focuses on life writing, in particular how the small acts of life add up to our identity or come into conflict with it. They particularly enjoy work that tries to understand social history through the lens of personal experience. Recent favourite authors include Claire Keegan, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Maggie Nelson and Guadaulpe Nettel. Giselle splits her time between writing and a career in the charity sector, most recently leading a small charity.

Giselle said; “I can’t believe someone is commissioning me to write! This will be my first commission and publication, and it feels really good to be engaged as a writer in this way. I hope that being on the programme will help me better situate myself as a writer, build my confidence and most importantly, produce some work I’m proud of. I’m particularly excited for the mentoring element, and look forward to working with an experienced writer who can help me take the work from draft to fully formed thing.”
Eliezer Gore

Commissioned writer: Emerging Writer Commissions

Eliezer Gore

Commissioned writer: Emerging Writer Commissions

Eliezer Gore is a Zimbabwean-born artist who was raised in Lewisham. Through his art transforms concrete reality unveiling magical surrealist landscapes to deliver joyous affirming narratives.This year he staged an extract of his Debut Play “Return to Soil” at the Catford broadway for Lewisham Youth Theatre’s Hatch Festival. He is the 2024 Roundhouse poetry slam runner up, Born:: Free Writers Collective Alum and a Soho Writers Lab alum.

Eliezer said; “I’m looking forward to stretching my story telling ability by weaving a narrative across a series of poems.”
Naomi Walsh

Commissioned writer: Emerging Writer Commissions

Naomi Walsh

Commissioned writer: Emerging Writer Commissions

Naomi is a writer and creative based in SE London. Born and raised in Barnsley (South Yorkshire) to parents hailing from Sierra Leone and Liverpool, she likes to explore identity, mixing, sonder, and (be)longing in her work. After reading English at the University of Leeds, she spent 7 years working full time as a PR manager in London, earning a PR Week 30 Under 30 award, before going freelance in 2024 to pursue her writing.

Commissioned Works

Library

March 31st, 2025

Theories of Change by Giselle Cory

Library

March 31st, 2025

Last Orders by Eliezer Gore

Library

March 31st, 2025

To Ears and Tongues by Naomi Walsh

Who were the commissions for?

The Emerging Writers Commissions were open to London-based emerging writers aged 18+, writing poetry, fiction or narrative non-fiction.

Writers needed to be unpublished and unagented, with no literary agent representing them, without an existing book contract with a publisher, and without a prviously published full-length work.

Writers also had to be from underrepresented backgrounds. By this we mean:

Black, Asian, or Global Majority
D/deaf and Disabled
LGBTQIA+
Having had a working class upbringing
On a low income (i.e. writers whose income is through benefits or paid on or below the London Living Wage hourly rate, and whose savings do not exceed the amount needed to pay for three months of living costs (rent, gas and electricity, food etc.)
Care experienced

One of the three commissions was reserved for a writer living in the borough of Lewisham.

Judges

Olumide Popoola

Judge

Olumide Popoola

Judge

Olumide Popoola is a Nigerian German writer. Her publications include a novella, short stories, poems, essays, creative nonfiction, a play, and the critically acclaimed novel When We Speak of Nothing. She holds a PhD in creative writing and has lectured in creative writing at various universities. She is the creator and leader of ‘The Future is Back’, a development scheme for emerging LGBTQ+ writers. She is currently touring her latest novel Like Water Like Sea, which was published in May 2024.
Joelle Taylor

Judge

Joelle Taylor

Judge

Joelle Taylor is a queer, working class author of six plays and four collections of poetry, most recently C+nto and Othered Poems, winner of the TS Eliot Prize and Polari Prize for LGBTQ+ literature. Her debut novel, The Night Alphabet, was published by Riverrun in 2024. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Arts, Taylor is the host and co-curator of Out-Spoken, the UK’s premier poetry and music club, currently resident at the Southbank Centre. She has featured regularly on BBC radio and television, and as a performer has toured the UK with Neil Bartlett’s stage adaptation of Derek Jarman’s Blue.