Richard Benson, the former editor of the Face magazine, has been announced as the editor of a new literary magazine and platform for working-class writers, titled the Bee.
Supported by Faber and actor Michael Sheen, the Bee aims to “fight the increasing marginalisation of working-class writers, and of working-class people in publishing”.
Its channels include a website, a podcast and a literary magazine publishing both fiction and non-fiction. The organisers will also run an outreach programme, seeking out new writers from working class backgrounds and supporting their professional development.
“Justice and fairness demands that people from the less well-off sections of society have the chance to tell their stories, and to get them heard,” Benson said. “But it’s also about common sense. Much of the important writing being done today, and so many of the best-loved stories come from ordinary working people. So often, it’s stories from the working classes that express what’s really happening in the world.”
The initiative was borne out of A Writing Chance, a UK-wide programme for working-class writers, co-founded by Sheen, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Northumbria University, and produced by the writing development charity New Writing North.
Claire Malcolm, CEO of New Writing North, which is producing the Bee, said: “There’s never been so much debate about class in the creative industries but nothing has changed and things are actually getting worse and inequality more entrenched, hence the need to make our own reality. Talent is classless. Opportunity, however, is class-bound. The Bee is an urgent response to that.”
