Melanie Jones talks through the features of our brand-new website.
Welcome to MIR Online, the new home for the best Creative Writing from Birkbeck and beyond!
Why is everything different?
At the end of last year a small group of students and alumni met with Julia Bell and Sue Tyley to discuss the future of the Writers’ Hub. Managing Editor, Rebecca Rouillard, had decided to move on and it seemed like the perfect time for an update and a revamp.
For some time, Julia has been keen to unite The Mechanics’ Institute Review, the Writers’ Hub, and Hubbub under one banner and our new website does just that. Work published in our anthology is copy-edited to a professional level and we want to bring that level of professionalism to our online platform.
Although the site looks very different, all of the resources from the Writers’ Hub are still available. They have been archived and will be available soon.
So what’s changed?
MIR Online will publish short stories, creative non-fiction and poetry on a weekly basis. Anyone, anywhere in the world, is welcome to submit.
Work will be selected by members of the editorial committee and we are delighted to have acclaimed authors Julia Bell, Toby Litt, Stephen Willey, editor Sue Tyley and a series of guest authors, agents and publishing professionals working on MIR Online.
One of the big changes is that all selected work will now be copy-edited before being published. We want our contributors to have a great experience working with us. Everyone on the team has had their work copy-edited and we know that it’s an excellent opportunity for authors to develop and improve. We also want MIR Online to have a reputation for excellence and professionalism.
What about Hubbub?
Hubbub is becoming MIR Live. It will still take place at The Harrison and we hope to run this termly as before. However, MIR Live will not have a separate call for submissions, readers will be selected and invited from our general pool.
The biggest, and most exciting, change is that we are opening MIR Live up to everyone. You no longer need to be from Birkbeck to read at the event, you just need to have a great piece!
What’s staying the same?
We’ve kept the same logos and images used on the Writers’ Hub to make MIR Online easy to navigate. You can search the site by clicking on the blue triangle in the top right-hand corner.
We’re also migrating some of our favourite content from the Writers’ Hub over to MIR Online. Some of those pieces are here already, but there’ll be more coming. Get in touch and tell us your old favourites! We also have some great new content lined up for the next couple of weeks.
You can keep up to date with everything we are up to in the News section or by subscribing to our mailing list (if you subscribed to The Writers’ Hub you will already be subscribed as the mailing list hasn’t changed).
Enjoy exploring the new site. We hope to read your submissions very soon!