Amateur Hour Writing Group

As PhD researchers we are more than accustomed to stewing. Whether it be on our thesis, or on our sofa, the process of writing a PhD can leave us all with the sense of being stuck in the stew. In an attempt therefore to remain close to this golden thread and evoke a wintery feel our creative writing group Amateur Hour chose ‘stew’ as the theme for this year’s zine. (available for preorder here: https://amateur-hour-107875.square.site/ )

Amateur Hour is an amateur writing group I created with the goal of emulating creative writing seminars in a less formal setting. Amateur Hour began its life during my MA at the University of Leicester and it has continued to run for almost two years now. The feedback takes place entirely online and everyone is involved in the running and direction the group takes, for example the theme for this year’s zine which was decided with a vote. Honest and constructive feedback are the foundations of the writing group and the members have seen huge improvement in the way feedback is communicated since its conception two years ago.

At the start Amateur Hour consisted mostly of my course mates, along with a few passionate writers I’d had met during my undergrad. Since then, some of the members have changed but the group’s core beliefs remain central to the feedback process and it remains a writing group founded around Leicester and the brilliant writers I’ve met here. A particular mention ought to go to fellow M4C 2024 cohort Laura Besley, whose participation in Amateur Hour from the early days has been incredibly valuable from the get go.

Alongside weekly submissions, in December 2023, Amateur Hour also self-published its first zine. For those unfamiliar a zine is a short self-published collection of work, in this case poetry and short prose. Our original Zine wasn’t centred around a theme but instead aimed to explore how polished we could make our work collectively. Happily, it was a great success and it was clear to me and all the members, another zine was imminent. Thus, we welcome Amateur Hour’s second (and with little doubt defining) edition: ‘Stew’.

If you’d like to learn more about the Amateur Hour and would perhaps be interested in getting involved, please get in touch with me at nlw17@leicester.ac.uk (membership is not limited to Leicester based writers despite its roots). Any support for the zine would be hugely appreciated and pricing at £7 a copy aims to be affordable while covering our self-publishing costs.

Nina Walker

M4C student

University of Leicester