01 – Induction to Penny Authors
Thursday, 9 December 2021
You will have read the Penny Authors information about our processes, facilities and how the project operates. You will then have submitted your poems for appraisal.
Following the appraisal of your work, you will have received an Acceptance Email.
Your Acceptance
Your poems have been read by the Penny Authors appraiser and assessed against the project's criteria. Your work has been approved for inclusion in an forthcoming Penny Authors anthology.
At this stage, your work has been accepted and placed in the publication queue. It is not yet entered into the main digital book file. This takes place later, during the typesetting and production stage.
In the meantime, we begin preparing your Penny Authors profile and records.
Your PA File
We will process the information you have provided, which may include:
- Your name and address;
- Your curriculum vitae or biography;
- A passport-sized photograph;
- Your accepted poems and other relevant material.
A digital folder is created for you within the Penny Authors system. This becomes your individual PA file, where the work and information you submit to us can be securely organised and retained.
Your name is also added to the Penny Authors Central List.
The Central List is used as the principal record of participating authors and may be used in Penny Authors publications, promotional material and social media.
Introducing You to Penny Authors
Your photograph may be used to publicly welcome you to Penny Authors alongside the cover of the anthology in which your work appears.
This may include our existing Penny Authors platforms and promotional channels, such as:
- Facebook;
- The Penny Authors blog;
- The Penny Authors website;
- Social media posts;
- Articles and other promotional material.
The purpose is to introduce you as a new member of the Penny Authors community and celebrate your inclusion in the anthology.
Penny Authors Mail-outs
Your email address will also be added to the Penny Authors mailing list.
You will therefore receive Penny Authors communications and mail-outs from time to time, including information about forthcoming anthologies, developments, opportunities and other relevant PA activities.
The Annual Anthology
The Penny Authors Anthology is an annual publication.
Our usual aim is to release the anthology during the summer, generally around August, with a submission deadline around May.
Your accepted work will be published alongside the writing of other Penny Authors, representing a wide range of abilities, experiences, backgrounds and writing styles.
A Collective Anthology
From the 2022 anthology onwards, Penny Authors adopted an important principle concerning how authors are presented within the main body of the book.
Authors' names are not placed alongside their individual poems.
Instead, the names of participating writers are listed separately.
This was a deliberate decision and forms part of the philosophy behind Penny Authors.
Why are the names separated from the poems?
We want readers to encounter the writing before they encounter the identity of the writer.
A poem should be allowed to speak for itself.
When a reader sees an author's name, they may unconsciously make assumptions about that person — their age, gender, ethnicity, culture, religion, nationality, social background or life circumstances.
Those assumptions can influence how a piece of writing is received.
Penny Authors seeks to remove those influences as far as possible.
By separating the author's name from the poem, we invite the reader to approach the writing with an open mind.
The reader is encouraged to experience the words, emotions, thoughts and circumstances expressed within the work without first knowing who wrote them.
Reading the Universal Experience
The anthology brings together people from different backgrounds and experiences.
Yet many of the emotions expressed through writing are universal:
love, loss, grief, happiness, loneliness, hope, struggle, joy, fear, relationships, memories and the experiences of everyday life.
By not immediately identifying the writer, we encourage the reader to connect with the experience expressed in the work, rather than with an assumed identity behind it.
The intention is not to erase the writer.
Quite the opposite.
The writer is recognised separately as part of the Penny Authors community.
But, within the main body of the anthology, the writing comes first.
The reader encounters the poem.
The reader experiences the words.
The reader forms their own response.
Only afterwards can they discover who contributed that work.
This is part of what makes Penny Authors different.
The principle
Read the words before judging the writer.
Experience the poem before making assumptions about the person.
Penny Authors seeks to create a space where writing can cross the boundaries of ethnicity, culture, religion, background and circumstance — allowing the shared experiences of human life to come to the forefront.
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