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Slightly Foxed Issue 89: From the Editors

As we were sitting round the kitchen table recently, chewing over general thoughts about SF and plans for the year ahead, it struck us that some of our most interesting and original pieces have come to us via our Writers’ Competitions. One of our aims, when we started Slightly Foxed, was to find contributors from as wide a range of back grounds as possible rather than depending on professional journalists and published writers to fill the magazine. This policy has led us in so many interesting directions and proved that you don’t have to be a ‘writer’ to write well. It’s also become obvious from the many letters and emails we receive from all over the world that our subscribers are a fascinating bunch, well able to hold their own when it comes to putting words together.

So we’re delighted to announce another Slightly Foxed Writers’ Competition, which is open to readers of all ages. What we’re looking for is a piece of not more than 1,500 words on a book of your choice, written in characteristic SF style – which is to say a piece that reflects your own experience of the book and why you have chosen it, and makes other people want to read it too. The winner will receive £300 and the piece will be published in Slightly Foxed, while the runner-up will appear on our website. It’s a good idea to consult our online index to make sure we haven’t already featured the book you’ve chosen. Entries should reach us by 1 September 2026 so you have all summer to let the creative juices flow. For more information see our website www.foxedquarterly.com or phone us at the office.

Our spring Slightly Foxed Edition The Making of Me by the children’s author Robert Westall (see p.14) is something very special. Known particularly for his prizewinning first novel The Mach

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As we were sitting round the kitchen table recently, chewing over general thoughts about SF and plans for the year ahead, it struck us that some of our most interesting and original pieces have come to us via our Writers’ Competitions. One of our aims, when we started Slightly Foxed, was to find contributors from as wide a range of back grounds as possible rather than depending on professional journalists and published writers to fill the magazine. This policy has led us in so many interesting directions and proved that you don’t have to be a ‘writer’ to write well. It’s also become obvious from the many letters and emails we receive from all over the world that our subscribers are a fascinating bunch, well able to hold their own when it comes to putting words together.

So we’re delighted to announce another Slightly Foxed Writers’ Competition, which is open to readers of all ages. What we’re looking for is a piece of not more than 1,500 words on a book of your choice, written in characteristic SF style – which is to say a piece that reflects your own experience of the book and why you have chosen it, and makes other people want to read it too. The winner will receive £300 and the piece will be published in Slightly Foxed, while the runner-up will appear on our website. It’s a good idea to consult our online index to make sure we haven’t already featured the book you’ve chosen. Entries should reach us by 1 September 2026 so you have all summer to let the creative juices flow. For more information see our website www.foxedquarterly.com or phone us at the office. Our spring Slightly Foxed Edition The Making of Me by the children’s author Robert Westall (see p.14) is something very special. Known particularly for his prizewinning first novel The Machine Gunners, Westall grew up in working-class Tyneside during the 1930s and ’40s, where his father was a foreman fitter at the local gasworks. He was a modest man who never wrote a memoir, but he left behind some autobiographical sketches that take him from birth through school to the publication of his first book, and these were brilliantly woven together after his death into The Making of Me by his partner Lindy McKinnel. Its striking honesty and warmth help to explain why Westall’s children’s books are still read and admired today. And finally, congratulations to Fiona Cox in the Lake District, the winner of our 17th annual crossword competition, who receives a free annual subscription. For those still puzzling over that last exasperating clue, you’ll find the answers on p. 31.

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