Hello, I'm Nathan Evans. So I'm the editor at Inkandescent, which is an independent publishing house that's been going for about five years now.
And this summer we publish a book called Mainstream that's an anthology of thirty
short stories by writers who are currently under-represented in mainstream publishing,
specifically LGBT, BAME and working class writers.
Some of those authors are established - Kit De Waal, Kerry Hudson, Paul McVeigh, their names you may have heard of.
And about half of the writers are emerging.
So those were selected through open submission, which we ran in association with Spread the Word, which is the London Writers Development Agency.
And we funded the whole thing through Unbound.
So as well as editing the twenty-nine stories, I also wrote one of the stories and I wanted to write for the first time -
I'd never written about it before - about my experiences at Oxford.
So I'm, I'm from a what you would probably call a lower middle class background.
I'm a grammar school boy, but I was the first in my family to go to university.
So for me, arriving in Oxford in 1993, it was a bit like arriving on another planet.
There were, you know, everything had funny names. Everyone was wearing these, these funny costumes and they were using these funny voices,
and I suppose at the age of 19 I just took everything in my stride.
It's only as I've looked back subsequently that I've thought quite how odd it was and quite how much back then,
everything seemed to be geared around the public school boy,
and I have every reason to think that that is now changing.
I was really, really proud to hear that Worcester was the first, I think,
academic institution anywhere in the country that guaranteed all those state school kids
their places back last summer when the lockdown algorithm marked down their grades.
So, anyway, back to my story. It is actually the first short story I've ever written.
So I've written a lot of plays: Stage plays, screenplays, poetry,
but I've never before this written a work of prose fiction,
so I had some stuff to learn. And my writing group, Leather Lane, were really, really helpful with that.
The other thing that was a challenge, as I said,
it's the material is largely autobiographical and that can be very cathartic for the writer, writing about what you know.
but this is a work of fiction. So at the end of the day, it has to work for the reader, for the audience,
so that was a second challenge. There's something that came very easily with the writing was the comedy, as I'm sure you can imagine,
there was there was quite a lot to send up in those Oxford ways,
and particularly as it's set in the world of the Oxford University Dramatic Society.
I was the president of Buskins, the Worcester Dramatic Society, for one year while I was there.
So I send that up.
I also send up the, the world that I come from and also my character, or the character that sort of represents me within the story -
apologies to anyone who knew me back then, I believe I was a rather taciturn young man - that came naturally,
the comedy and also the drama.
As I'm sure you can imagine, there was a lot of conflict between where this character has come from and where they currently find themselves.
I mean, add on top of that the fact that the character is coming out during the story, as indeed I was at that time.
The very first GaySoc meeting I ever went to was over in the, in the Morley Fletcher Room.
So I've been asked to say what it was that I learnt during my time at Worcester that has helped me with my writing,
and I've wracked my brains. And I sometimes wonder if there was anything that I learnt in those three years.
I mean, you know, so I was a fine arts student, so I did all my studying down at the Ruskin and I learnt to take myself
very, very seriously. And don't get me wrong, it was - the university was such an amazing opportunity,
Worcester was an amazing opportunity. I mean, I had materials grants,
I had a music scholarship, I got a travel grant to go to Rome in my second year.
And I had to, had to file a report on that. And I handed it into my
my moral tutor. And I'm really sorry, I, I, I can't remember his name.
And it was all very avant garde, you know, fractured text, reference to the myths, all of that.
And he handed it back to me and he said, "do you know, I couldn't tell if you enjoyed it."
And I think I'm going to take that as my, as my take home.
I have, I have learnt to enjoy the writing and also to let others enjoy the writing.
Thank you.