We’re pleased to offer one-to-one personalised feedback on your work, delivered by experienced and published underrepresented writers, for those at any stage.
See the full list of our feedback readers below.
You’ll receive an honest, rigorous assessment of your work and suggestions for improvement, development and revision—either one page of written feedback or a 30 minute Zoom session.
We can offer appraisals on either:
- 1-3 poems - up to 150 lines maximum
- One short story/novel excerpt in adult/literary fiction - 2,000 words maximum
- One creative non-fiction piece/excerpt – 2,000 words maximum
Creative non-fiction includes memoir, lyric essays, narrative/immersive journalism, nature, food, travel and place writing. Please read our blog post and get in touch if you have any questions.
You are welcome to request more than one appraisal in more than one genre, but please book these separately.
Please allow four weeks for return of your appraisal.
- Please note this is not a copy-editing service and detailed line edits/corrections will not be made.
- We cannot offer feedback on longer works at this time, but you can find other organisations who provide this.
- We can only provide feedback on the above genres—we do not have mentors with experience in crime, fantasy, sci-fi, horror, erotica, children’s/YA writing, screenplays or scripts, academic, historical essays, criticism or reviews.
The service is available for £125. It is not subsidised and we unfortunately cannot offer concessionary rates, discounts or bursaries.
If you have any questions, please contact us on info@creativefuture.org.uk.
Submit your work for feedback
Our readers
All feedback is provided by underrepresented, emerging writers who are also past winners of the Creative Future Writers’ Award.
Creative Non-Fiction
Louis Bailey
Louis is a sociologist by training whose writing explores landscapes of vulnerability, threat, and marginalisation. His work has featured in a range of journals including History of Photography, Mortality; and the Journal of Interpersonal Violence. In 2023, Louis was shortlisted for the Nan Shepherd Prize, and in 2024 he won the Creative Future Platinum Award for Non-Fiction. He is currently working on his debut nature memoir, The Night Run, which explores darkness, fear, and the joy of the nocturnal realm. His story, ‘Hunter’s Moon’, will feature in the forthcoming Book of Bogs, eds. Chilvers & Shaw (Little Toller Press).
Bethany Handley
Bethany, a writer, poet, and disability activist, was named among the UK’s most influential disabled people (Shaw Trust 2024). She won Creative Future’s Gold Prize for Non-Fiction 2023 and was shortlisted for the RSL Jerwood Poetry Prize 2024. Bethany co-edited Beyond / Tu Hwnt, the Anthology of Welsh Deaf and Disabled Writers. Her poetry pamphlet Cling Film (Seren 2025) was named one of the 40 best books, films and events of 2025 by Country Living and her work has been featured by the Poetry Foundation, BBC Radio 4, Country Living and more. She is currently working on a non-fiction book.
Rhiya Pau
Rhiya is a British-born poet, performer and educator. Her debut collection Routes (Arachne Press, 2022), received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors. Off the page, you can find Rhiya teaching workshops, hosting events and performing at festivals and open mic nights.
Fiction
Matt Freidson
Matt has managed and been a shortlist judge for the Creative Future Writers’ Award since 2018. He has taught creative writing for Birkbeck, City University, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Oregon and Creative Future’s short story masterclass. He was a Carl Djerassi fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and has published over twenty short stories in magazines and journals, as well as a novel, This Side of the River.
Iqbal Hussain
Iqbal debut novel, Northern Boy, was published in June 2024 by Unbound Firsts. His short stories have won first prize in Writing magazine’s Grand Flash competition 2023 and also the 2023 Fowey Festival of Art and Literature. His stories appear in various anthologies and on sites including The Hopper, caughtbytheriver and The Willowherb Review. Iqbal won gold for prose in the Creative Future Writers’ Awards 2019 and is a recipient of the inaugural London Writers’ Awards 2018.
Tom Newlands
Tom is a Scottish writer living in London. He is the winner of a London Writer’s Award, a Creative Future Writers’ Award and New Writing North’s A Writing Chance. His debut novel Only Here, Only Now was selected as a Guardian Book of the Year, and Shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, The ADCI Prize and The McKitterick Prize.
Poetry
Natalie Linh Bolderston
Natalie is a Vietnamese-Chinese-British poet. In 2020, she received an Eric Gregory Award and co-won the Rebecca Swift Women Poets’ Prize. Her poem ‘Middle Name with Diacritics’ came third in the 2019 National Poetry Competition and was shortlisted for the 2021 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. In 2024, she was Creative Future’s writer-in-residence for Stoke-on-Trent, her hometown. She is now working on her first full-length collection.
Karen Downs Barton
Karen is a working-class Anglo-Romani writer specialising in poetry, travel and memoir. Her first book, Didicoy, based on her experiences of single parenthood and state childcare won the International Book and Pamphlet Competition in 2022 and was a Poetry Book Society recommendation. Her collection, Minx, has been acquired by Chatto & Windus for publication in March 2025. Karen is an experienced creative writing tutor and has worked in schools, King’s College London, Creative Future, Wiltshire Young Artists and the Shakespeare and Race Festival.
Karen won the Cosmo Davenport-Hines award in 2022, was long listed for the Ivan Juritz prize in 2023, highly commended in the AUB International Poetry Prize 2024 and is an alumni of Ledbury’s Voice Coaching programme. Karen’s writing is widely anthologised and has appeared in Tears in the Fence, The High Window, Rattle, Ink, Sweat and Tears, and The North amongst others. Karen has recently featured on BBC Radio 4's The Verb talking about representation in literature and reading from her collection.
Helen Bowell
Helen is a poet, producer and editor. Her debut pamphlet The Barman (Bad Betty Press, 2022) was a Poetry Book Society Choice. Her poems, reviews and translations have been published in bath magg, Poetry London, The Poetry Review, Poetry Wales and elsewhere. She co-directs Dead [Women] Poets Society, which resurrects women poets through events and online, and co-guest-edited Modern Poetry in Translation. Helen ran Bi+ Lines, a project for bi+ poets, and edited the first anthology of bi+ poets (fourteen poems, 2023). She produced the Poetry Translation Centre’s 20th birthday programme of events in 2024.
Chloe Elliott
Chloe is a winner of the 2022 New Poets Prize as well as a 2020 Creative Future Writers’ Award. Her writing features in Aesthetica, bath magg, Bedtime Stories for the End of the World, Magma, The North, Strix and The Poetry Review, amongst others. Her pamphlet, Encyclopaedia is out with Smith|Doorstop and her microchapbook DREAMSIMULATION is with The Braag. She is part of The Writing Squad and the 2024/25 Roundhouse Poetry Collective.
Jem Henderson
Jem was the Creative Future 2024 Leeds Writer In Residence. Jem is a genderqueer poet from Leeds, and a 2021 Creative Future Writers' Award winner. Their work focuses on the body, motherhood, food, queerness and on triumph over trauma, playing with both traditional forms and experimental poetry. an othered mother, their first pamphlet, is out with Nine Pens Press. Their first collaborative project Genderfux came out in 2022 with Nine Pens Press, and a new collaborative collection with Chris Campbell, small plates, is out now with Broken Sleep Books.
Rona Luo
Rona is a queer, neurodivergent writer and acupuncturist based in London. She received the Creative Future Gold Prize in Poetry in 2024 and her poetry was highly commended by the 2025 Verve Poetry Competition. Her poetry, creative non-fiction and critical essays have appeared in Magma, Propel, fourteen poems,The Massachusetts Review, Honey Literary, ANMLY, Mom Egg Review, Suspect Journal and more. Her visual poetry has been exhibited at the Royal Festival Hall, and she has taught writing workshops for Poetry School, Queer Circle, Kundiman and the Southbank Centre.
Sallyanne Rock
Sallyanne is a queer, neurodivergent poet and freelance writer from the Black Country. She writes about domestic abuse, queer identity and religious trauma. Her poetry has been published widely in various journals and anthologies, and she has appeared at spoken word events across the West Midlands. She works as a mentor, workshop facilitator and poet for hire, and has worked alongside organisations such as Writing West Midlands, Verve Poetry Festival and Creative Future as a 2025 Writer In Residence. In 2019 she was awarded the gold prize for poetry in the Creative Future Writers’ Awards. Sallyanne’s debut pamphlet, Salt & Metal, is published with Fawn Press.