The Skinny and Edinburgh International Festivals Emerging Writers Programme

The Skinny have teamed up with Edinburgh International Festival for a new series of in-depth features exploring the arts in Scotland.

They have launched this project to celebrate and shine a light on the cultural sector during these difficult times. It is their aim for the series of features to explore an element of theatre, music, performance, and/or dance past, present and future.

The finished pieces will be published between March and August 2021, and they are opening the doors to pitches from early career writers based in Scotland for a paid commission to be published in The Skinny’s print magazine, online and across their social media networks.

They are also keen to take a creative approach to digital content running in parallel to each article, and encourage ideas around how your feature could also be represented in other multimedia forms (i.e. video, social, digital event, podcast).

How to apply?

Send an email to pitches@theskinny.co.uk with a condensed summary of your proposed article, zeroing in on the particular angle you would like to take: who or what would you like to write about? Why is it important to cover them? What do you hope the article will do? Pitches should be 200-300 words. Please link or attach two or three writing samples (unpublished pieces are welcome as writing samples).

Who is eligible?

Anyone who can write fluently and convincingly about culture in Scotland. There is no requirement to have been published previously, however they do ask for examples of finished pieces of critical or journalistic writing, so they can get a sense of your writing style and how it might fit with The Skinny.

They are particularly keen to platform writers who are underrepresented in Scottish cultural journalism, including but not limited to writers of marginalised genders and/or LGBTQ+, writers from BAME or socio-economically marginalised backgrounds, and disabled and neurodiverse writers.

Deadline: Sunday 31 January 2021.

Successful pitches will then be developed with their editors into a longer form piece of writing, around 2000-2500 words, and published pieces will receive a fee of £300.