Sixth Element Publishing

22/05/2025

It's time for your entries for the Crossing the Tees Short Story Competition 2025... we're getting ready to read them all and we're sure it'll be the usual difficult job of shortlisting them. The closing date for entries is 12 midnight on Thursday 31st July 2025. Find out how to enter here…

Welcome to the Crossing the Tees Short Story Competition 2025. Budding authors and creative writers – share your stories with us for a chance to appear in a published anthology and take home a…

06/03/2025

Crossing the Tees are delighted to announce Amy Lord as our writer in residence for this year's festival.

Amy Lord is a novelist and short story writer from Middlesbrough. She is the author of award-winning dystopian novel, The Disappeared, which imagines an alternate Britain where banned books become weapons of the resistance.

She also writes short fiction inspired by the changing post-industrial landscapes of North East England, using elements of magic or the uncanny to bring an unexpected dimension to the story. She was a recent finalist in the Mslexia Short Story Competition and the Dinesh Allirajah Prize for Short Fiction. Her stories have appeared in various magazines and anthologies.

During this year’s Crossing the Tees Festival, Amy will lead a series of writing workshops in libraries across all five local authorities, designed to inspire writers and generate new story ideas, as well as help writers to learn new story writing techniques and develop their self-editing skills.

Amy will also be offering 1-1 mentoring sessions for writers attending the festival workshops, when she will provide feedback and support on their work and help them to prepare an entry for this year’s Crossing the Tees short story competition. Mentoring sessions will be available on a first come, first served basis.

More details about Amy's workshops will be announced in April.

Darlington Libraries Middlesbrough Libraries Redcar & Cleveland Libraries Stockton-on-Tees Libraries Hartlepool Community Hubs DRAKE - The Bookshop Sixth Element Publishing

28/06/2024

Good advice… but things could go wrong.

30/05/2024

Looking forward to the Writers' Day at Crossing the Tees on Saturday 8th June!

Last time I ran a whole day of writer workshops, a few people said to me that beforehand they were a bit unsure of committing to a whole day... afterwards they said it had been great, well worth the time and that they were glad they'd decided to come.

We cover a lot, including:
- Goal setting and priorities
- The basics of plot structure, character development, point of view and tense
- How to publish your own book incuding a run through the publishing process and then a practical guide to KDP and other options
- Setting up distribution channels
- Marketing and selling your book

It's informal and friendly, and we tend to tailor what we're talking about to be relevant to everyone attending.

Hope to see you soon.
Happy writing,
CGH xx

https://www.crossingthetees.org/whats_on/writer-day-an-introduction-to-novel-writing-and-publishing/


Crossing the Tees

Always wanted to write and publish your own novel? Join Gillie Hatton of Sixth Element Publishing for a full day of friendly and informal sessions giving an introduction to the basics of novel writ…