Click on the links below to view more details about YouWriteOn in the press. To join for free, click here.

The BBC News Site
"Each month, the people behind the highest-ranked stories at the site, YouWriteOn.com, will receive free critiques from established writers and agents. The Arts Council is behind the site, which aims to give budding authors the chance to see their own work in print."

From The Times Newspaper: 
"The Arts Council-sponsored website youwriteon.com allows writers to evaluate the opening chapters of each other’s unpublished novels, with interjections from industry professionals."

The Scotsman
"Each month, the top-rated chapters receive a free detailed assessment from five professional writers - the kind of service for which you'd normally expect to pay about £150. Leading literary agencies Curtis Brown and Christopher Little also promise to take a look at the site's best work"

YouWriteOn Member Feedback: ‘The feedback is helping me enormously. When more than one reader hits on the same weakness, bingo - do something. Reviewing the work of others is a lesson in itself. Somebody writes an atmospheric description and you wonder why you can't do as well yourself. Somebody else misses a plot opportunity and you realise you have done that too.’


Membership is free, sponsored by the Arts Council. To view more details about YouWriteOn and our literary professionals, click here. 


Our Literary Professionals


SARA O'KEEFFE 

Sara O’ Keeffe is a Senior Editor working for leading publisher Orion. Orion publish some of the world's best selling authors, including Ian Rankin, Michael Palin, and Elmore Leonard. Sara works with many best selling authors and specialises in editing crime fiction, women’s fiction, action-adventure and historical fiction. Sara previously worked for a large bookseller as a crime fiction buyer. She has sat as a judge on the CWA (Crime Writers Association) debut dagger panel and has been an active member of the RNA (Romantic Novelist’s Association) for years. 


GILLIAN STERN 

Gillian Stern works as a Literary Editor, following many years as a Commissioning Editor. She works as an Editor at leading publisher Bloomsbury, working with Alexandra Pringle, Editor-in-Chief at Bloomsbury. She also works with all the Literary Agents at leading literary agency Curtis Brown, whose bestselling authors include Margaret Atwood, Ed McBain, David Lodge and Sue Townsend. Gillian reads novels across the genres. She reads novels that the agents have signed or are thinking of signing (Curtis Brown director Jonny Geller, for example, is well known for work with new authors) and provides constructive edits, and her opinion on how a novel works/does not work and how it could move forward. She works on novels that are definitely going to be published, and which may also be the author's second or third novel. Gillian provides detailed opinions, and is well known for her constructive approach, and ability to help authors move forward with their work.

She also works with Luigi Bonomi and Associates; A M Heath and The Literary Consultancy, as well as directly with authors who know of her work and approach her directly for a constructive edit. She has worked on many well-known and very successful contemporary novels. 


MICHAEL LEGAT

After a highly successful career in publishing, mostly as Editorial Director firstly of Corgi Books and later of Cassell, Michael Legat became a full-time writer and tutor of Creative Writing. He has published five novels and eighteen non-fiction books, the latter including the Best Sellers An Author's Guide to Publishing and Writing for Pleasure and Profit. 

Website: http://www.bookends.clara.net/