Spelt magazine was founded by Wendy Pratt in 2021. Working with Co-editor Steve Nash and Poetry film editor Helen Dewbery Spelt is now in its third year. Spelt recently launched the Spelt Nature Writing School.

Why ‘Spelt’?

Spelt is an ancient grain brought to Britain thousands of years ago and cultivated by our ancient farmers from around 2000 BC. It is tenacious, delicious, hardy and nutritious. It’s also the past participle of spell; both an essential act for creating the written word and a noun for a magical invocation. 

We want to make Spelt a self sustaining magazine full of excellent poetry and creative non fiction, interviews, reviews, articles and writing prompts, but we need your help. 

If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that not everybody has access to the arts, and by making the creative arts accessible to people who may not be able to travel, we help to make the arts inclusive of all writers and artists with something to say about their own existence. We have seen a revolution in the way we interact and we want to build on that.

To live rurally is to, in general, live in areas with poor transport links; where the physicality of travel can often be almost impossible. This means that interacting with the creative arts on the platforms available is difficult and becomes exclusionary, devaluing the rural experience. During the pandemic we saw what electronic, web based interaction could do, and we also saw people reaching out to nature and the landscape around themselves, looking for the natural spaces in which to breath and exist.

Our five year plan includes outreach workshops in rural settings, online webinars and conferences and a magazine that values the rural landscape and the people living within it, a magazine that proactively encourages creativity, as well as celebrating those writers working in rural settings, writing about the rural experience, celebrating nature and the natural world.

To find out more, follow this link to the Spelt website: Spelt Website