LefLion Kickstarter Campaign

James Walker, LefLion Literature Editor:

For the past ten years I’ve given my blood and guts to LeftLion magazine for free because it is such an important publication in helping to change perceptions about Nottingham. The magazine was created for two reasons: Partly to offer an alternative to the journalism of traditional publications such as the Evening Post and secondly to counteract the negative branding of Nottingham as ‘Shottingham’ after a spate of random shootings in the early noughties. My proudest moment was when we had the balls to run with the front cover ‘Another Shooting in Nottingham’ – referring, instead, to our thriving film industry.   

As the Literature Editor I have hosted spoken word events such as Scribal Gathering at the Nottingham Contemporary, literature podcasts and created and developed the WriteLion brand which at present gives two pages to poetry and literature. With a readership of around 40,000 we easily offer more exposure to poetry than the most established magazines on the market. 

I have strived over the years to offer a space for self-published authors, ensuring a minimum of one review every issue. Online we have run interviews as well as extracts from books. Knowing that certain bookshops refuse to even stock self-published novels and most magazines won’t even entertain reviews, we have become a vital platform for a new generation of writer prepared to go it alone. 

Now we need your support. To celebrate our tenth anniversary we are running a Kickstarter campaign to help raise £10,000 so that we can go monthly. This will mean even more reviews for self-published writers and space for new presses daring to offer an alternative to mainstream fiction. Not one penny of this campaign will go into my pocket. It is all for the additional cost of printing and distribution, as we aim to broaden our circulation by delivering to towns on the wider outskirts of the city. 

This now all boils down to a very simple equation. If you support us we can support you. 

More info on the Kickstarter campaign here http://www.leftlion.co.uk/articles.cfm/title/leftlion-kickstarter/id/6846

James Walker is the Literature Editor of LeftLion magazine, Chair of the Nottingham Writers’ Studio, co-Director of the Festival of Words and a Board member of Nottingham: City of Literature. He is currently editing together the graphic novel Dawn of the Unread