Autumn 2021

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Editors

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Fiction Contributors

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Artwork Contributors

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Nonfiction Contributors

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Drama Contributors

This Autumn 2021 Issue of Spellbinder is a very special publication because it marks our organisation’s one year anniversary. We will be celebrating our birthday at the start of October with a large online party to which all previous contributors are invited. We are extremely excited for this fun event, which will also involve an award ceremony to celebrate the very best of the written and visual art we have published this year.

We will also be launching a ‘Reflections’ page on our website. This will review the previous year. Upon submission, we ask for the national identity of contributors; this will now allow us to celebrate the diversity of our writers and artists, and the global reach of our publication as we announce the total number of countries and continents that our successful contributors identify with. Other statistics will be listed on the ‘Reflections’ page so that members, contributors and readers can all track Spellbinder’s progress. As an organisation, it is extremely important for us to reflect on what has gone well and what we need to improve. Our annual ‘Reflections’ page will include a plan of what we wish to achieve in the next year, as well as list the awards granted at the anniversary party.

This season also saw a significant expansion in our team, such that we now have many more talented, skilled and passionate editors, as well as a specific Podcast Coordinator, Doriana. She is due to release our first podcast episode via Spotify soon. This will feature an interview with Linda and I, and we will be answering Doriana’s questions about Spellbinder’s core values and editing processes. I am hugely grateful for the commitment and dedication exhibited by our new members of the team and look forward to continuing to expand even further.

We were also proud to acquire one thousand Twitter followers at the start of August. To celebrate this, we collaborated with Prospectus: A Literary Offering to offer multiple prizes. We plan to continue collaborating with Prospectus on future events so look out for these on our special ‘Events’ page on our website.

It is an unbelievably emotional time for the team as we look back at what we have achieved together in collaboration with our contributors, readers, featured writers and artists, fellow publications and university writing groups this year. This time last year, we had no idea that Spellbinder would reach so many countries and become such a huge part of all of our lives. It is truly an honour to be able to provide a platform for some of the best new voices in writing and talents in art. As a team, we are committed to seeing this publication continue to grow and develop a conversation with other magazines, groups and publishers. We hope that you can look forward to many more events, as well as blog posts and podcast episodes in the coming year, in addition to four new and hopefully even better issues of Spellbinder.

I want to conclude with a thank you to everyone who has been involved with Spellbinder this year, whether that has been offering us some technological advice, or submitting to us, or even watching some of our contributors perform at our Spoken Word Showcase event in the spring. We could not do this without you! As Louise May Alcott once claimed, ‘[i]t takes two flints to make a fire’, and therefore we are indebted to you all for the success of this international and flourishing publication.

By Amber Kennedy, Chief Editor