To celebrate our 30th anniversary next year, Spread the Word are commissioning six London-based writers across two categories to create new writing. We’re excited to share with you the six chosen writers.

30th Anniversary Emerging Writer Commissions

The Emerging Writer Commissions were open to unagented and unpublished writers from underrepresented backgrounds.

The commissions have been awarded to: Giselle Cory, Eliezer Gore and Naomi Walsh. These commissions were judged by Olumide Popoola and Joelle Taylor.

The 30th Anniversary Emerging Writer Commissions are generously supported by The London Community Foundation and Cockayne – Grants for the Arts.

30th Anniversary Deaf and Disabled Writer Commissions

The Deaf and Disabled Writer Commissions were open to writers facing disablist and/ or audist barriers.

The commissions have been awarded to Oli Isaac, Jamila Prowse and Ellie Spirrett. These commissions were judged by Ayesha Chouglay and Joe Rizzo Naudi.

Both commissions have an open brief and there is no theme which the work has to respond to. Instead, our selected writers are invited to be bold with their ideas, to experiment and take risks in their approach to style and content. The six commissioned writers are being matched with a mentor to work with on the short stories and poems they are writing, as well as to develop their writing careers. The finished pieces will be unveiled at Deptford Literature Festival in March 2025.

About the Writers selected for the Emerging Writers Commissions

Giselle Cory

Giselle focuses on life writing, in particular how the small acts of life add up to our identity or come into conflict with it. They particularly enjoy work that tries to understand social history through the lens of personal experience. Recent favourite authors include Claire Keegan, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Maggie Nelson and Guadaulpe Nettel. Giselle splits her time between writing and a career in the charity sector, most recently leading a small charity.

Giselle said; “I can’t believe someone is commissioning me to write! This will be my first commission and publication, and it feels really good to be engaged as a writer in this way. I hope that being on the programme will help me better situate myself as a writer, build my confidence and most importantly, produce some work I’m proud of. I’m particularly excited for the mentoring element, and look forward to working with an experienced writer who can help me take the work from draft to fully formed thing.”

Eliezer Gore

Eliezer Gore is a Zimbabwean-born artist who was raised in Lewisham. Through his art transforms concrete reality unveiling magical surrealist landscapes to deliver joyous affirming narratives.This year he staged an extract of his Debut Play “Return to Soil” at the Catford broadway for Lewisham Youth Theatre’s Hatch Festival. He is the 2024 Roundhouse poetry slam runner up, Born:: Free Writers Collective Alum and a Soho Writers Lab alum.

Eliezer said; “I’m looking forward to stretching my story telling ability by weaving a narrative across a series of  poems.”

Naomi Walsh

Naomi is a writer and creative based in SE London. Born and raised in Barnsley (South Yorkshire) to parents hailing from Sierra Leone and Liverpool, she likes to explore identity, mixing, sonder, and (be)longing in her work. After reading English at the University of Leeds, she spent 7 years working full time as a PR manager in London, earning a PR Week 30 Under 30 award, before going freelance in 2024 to pursue her writing.

About the writers selected for the Deaf and Disabled Writers Commissions

Oli Isaac

Oli is a writer based in London. Their passion for writing stems from growing up with a severe stutter and experiencing how language can fail us. Currently, Oli is developing their debut audio play as a recipient of Audible Theatre’s Emerging Playwrights Fund. They also teach poetry workshops, most recently with The Learning Cooperative. In 2024, Oli won the Verve Poetry Festival Competition.

Ollie said; “I am so honoured to have been selected by Spread The Word for this writer’s commission. I am grateful that they took a chance to support this writing proposal, given that neither I nor them really know how the project is going to end up. That level of trust and confidence is deeply heartening. I will spend the winter writing and experimenting with reflective, non-fiction essays, each one anchored by my local community garden in South East London. Non-fiction essays are an expansion of my current writing practice, but it is one I’ve been keen to move towards and test out. In poetry, I can often hide meaning between layers; in plays, I can build entirely new worlds. However, I’ve always deeply admired writers who seamlessly blend the personal, the philosophical, the poetic in their essays. It’s a challenge but one I am so excited to embrace, particularly with the one-on-one support and guidance of a writing mentor, and the help of Spread The Word throughout it all.”

Jamila Prowse

Jamila Prowse is an artist and writer, propelled by curiosity and a desire to understand herself. Informed by her lived experience of disability and mixed race ancestry, her work is research driven and indebted to Black feminist and crip scholars. She is an active participant in a rich and growing contemporary disabled artistic community and has been ongoingly researching, programming and creating around cripping the art world since 2018. Her writing has appeared in Frieze, Art Monthly and elsewhere.

Jamila said; “I’m extremely grateful and excited to be selected for the Spread the Word Deaf and Disabled Writers Commission. The opportunity comes at a time when I’ve had to rethink my practice in relation to an exacerbation in my disability and being signed off on long-term sick leave. It also marks the first time I’ve had dedicated professional development support around my writing. Doing so with the support and collaboration of disabled writers who inherently understand the unique barriers of living and working in an ableist world, means I feel uniquely understood and encouraged to find my way back to the process of writing, a form I’ve always returned to in order to better understand myself and my place in the world.”

Ellie Spirrett

Ellie is a poet, originally from Leeds, who started performing in Leicester and now lives in Greenwich. Ellie was a member of the Roundhouse collective in 2023/2024 and is now part of the Spread the Word Young Writers Collective. She writes about disability and ableism, chronic illness and the loneliness epidemic. 

Ellie said; “I’ve never done anything like this before so I’m excited, nervous and proud. It’s great to be working somewhere where my disability is recognised and celebrated as part of what makes me me. I’m so excited to see where this takes me next as a writer.”