Writers from Michael Sheen’s ‘A Writing Chance’ project mentored by Mirror journalists see their work in print
As an ordinary kid growing up in South Wales, I dreamed of being an actor.
That might have seemed unusual, but back then I had Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins to look up to – people who’d grown up like me and gone on to be successful. There were more books, films, play and TV shows created by working class people too, from ‘A Taste of Honey’ to ‘Boys from the Black Stuff’.
All that gave me confidence to have a go myself. But in the last few decades, things changed. It’s become much tougher for people from ordinary backgrounds to get their stories heard.
Today, half of published authors have middle-class backgrounds – but just 10 per cent are working-class. We know that kids from all walks of life enjoy reading at school, and working-class people are some of the best story tellers out there, so somewhere, somehow, something’s going wrong.
That’s why I worked with the Daily Mirror to launch ‘A Writing Chance’, a project to find and support new working-class writers from across the UK. We’ve already found fantastic storytellers – one, Tom Newlands, wrote one of the big hits of 2024, ‘Only Here, Only Now’.
Here you can read some of the work produced by our latest writers, who have been mentored by brilliant Mirror journalists.
It’s renewed my belief that as Billy Elliot director Stephen Daldry said, “the really successful work” happening at the moment “tends to be working-class writers telling working-class stories.”
In the future we’re going to be publishing more stories like this in The Bee, a new magazine which will be a home for working class writers. I hope you’ll read it – and, if you have a tale to tell, maybe write for us as well?
Justice and fairness demand that people from the less well-off sections of society have the chance to tell their stories, and to get them heard. But it’s also about common sense.
When we surveyed working-class people who like to read, 63 per cent said that representation was important, and that they’d like to see more people like themselves on the pages. There’s an untapped market out there.
Perhaps, most important of all, the most urgent, revelatory and entertaining stories – the ones we most want to hear – so often come from those who are excluded, or who struggle to be heard.
I’ve always believed that telling stories is an important way to make change in the world – and levelling the playing field for writers has to be a change for the better.
I believe that as we encourage working people to write, they will inspire others to be creative, just as working-class actors and writers inspired me.
By Emma Astra
Sue Townsend was working-class, disabled, and unapologetically loyal to my community in Leicester. She tackled serious issues with wit and heart – and she gave hope to people like me.
She showed me our lives — council estates, illness, hardship — were worth writing about.
We often hear what’s “wrong” with council estates. But what about what’s right? Activism, humour, and community resilience were led by women like Sue and my nana Winnie, who didn’t want credit. They just wanted change.
Sue wasn’t just a writer — she was a movement. Her voice gave working-class people visibility without patronising or exaggerating. She found the extraordinary in ordinary life and shared it with honesty.
Sue moved to Eyres Monsell, a Leicester council estate, in the late 60s. By the early 70s, Sue was a struggling single mum of three young children. When her son asked, “Why can’t we go to the zoo like other kids?” the seed of Adrian Mole was planted.
During the 70s, Sue met my nana, Winnie Aldwinckle. Winnie lived on the next estate, known as The Saff, where Sue worked – and was a powerhouse, co-founding the Parents’ Association in 1973. Her grassroots activism mirrored Sue’s — both women used media to create change.
Winnie regularly contributed to the Leicester Mercury, often collaborating with journalist Adam Wakelin. She even had her column, Winnie’s World — a podcast before podcasts. She talked, Wakelin wrote. All voluntary, all for the community.
When the Goldhill Adventure Playground faced closure, Sue and Winnie camped out to protest — and they won. Upon Winnie’s passing in 2013, Sue co-wrote her obituary with Wakelin for the Leicester Mercury — Sue’s last known publication before her own death in 2014.
She wrote, “If anything went wrong on the estate, we called on Winnie. You had a good chance of winning if she was on your side.”
Sue won, too — not by selling out or moving away, but by staying loyal to Leicester and writing truthfully about the people who lived there.
By Sunita Thind
‘You smell of curry’, ‘Sunita, you got a tache, gorilla’, ‘Oi, Coconut f*ck off home,’ were some of the taunts I grew up with. For people like me who have an invisible disability and are from a minority background, this is just a way of life.
But raising a problem in Asian society makes you the problem. ‘Chup kar’ – keep quiet, keep it to yourself – our elders would say in Punjabi.
In my community, we were not educated on such dirty matters as sex, periods, and other taboo subjects because we were a conservative community.
And nor was I taught at school to be proud of my multiple cultures and heritage, or about the hidden histories of the British Empire, Partition, or India’s contribution to fighting two world wars.
But after facing infertility, surgical menopause, hair loss, loss of my ovaries and fertility my family were there to lift me up, including my husband and silver-tipped Samoyed dog, Ghost.
At my beautiful Sikh wedding with my handsome white husband, I finally felt proud of the cultures and customs I used to reject but are part of my DNA.
The men in my family came over from Malaysian and Singapore. My Grandad eventually had a corner shop, my dad worked very hard, long hours at the Brickyard. I loved singing the Christian hymns at school, but when the doors closed it was my family, community and Gurdwara that gave me a spiritual sense of myself as well delicious Indian food.
We supported each other with the food we made, spices fragrant as our souls, bonding over special festivals like Diwali, Vasaki (Sikh Harvest festival), and Guru Nanak’s birthday, Rakhi.
If you are Caucasian, you are an expat, if you are a person of colour, you are an immigrant, migrant, refugee. We are still on the outside of the looking glass with our hands and faces pressed against it, desiring belonging.
By Zainab Amer
I write because of my community, not in spite of it.
I’m working-class, with English and Egyptian roots. My childhood summers were spent in Egypt, surrounded by family, food, and laughs. It was also the first time I saw real poverty. It shook me and still does. I knew even then: these stories mattered.
Being a working-class writer isn’t easy. The biggest challenge is access – or the lack of it: to resources, networks, and a seat at the table.
I have scrubbed bathrooms, stacked shelves, and balanced armfuls of plates while my feet throbbed. Politicians insist hard graft pays off. But here’s the truth: we can barely make rent. Instead, we’re rewarded with housing worries, not writing submissions.
Still, what I gain from my community outweighs the setbacks. I’ve listened to a carer who devoted 10 years to her father with dementia. I’ve bantered alongside retail comrades – a vital ingredient in surviving a nine-hour shift. These aren’t just stories of ‘struggle.’ They are full of compassion, grit, and humour. As a writer, I try to carry these through every story. Every article. Every pitch.
And as for my Egyptian side? In a time when negative depictions of Arabs are ubiquitous, it feels more urgent than ever to write about what I know: which is warmth, charm, and endless storytelling.
