Sorting through submissions in Jon McGregor’s office, Trent Building (Jon is editor of The Letters Page online journal).The Letters Page is a literary journal in letters, published by the School of English at the University of Nottingham and edited by Jon McGregor. We publish essays, stories, poetry, memoir, travelogue, and criticism; but all in the form of letters. We are interested in the literary traditions of letter-writing, and in the idea of correspondence in a digital age. http://www.theletterspage.ac.uk/

The Letters Page

A student placement like no other, ten years in the making.

Dear Reader,

We're thrilled to be able to explain more to you about what we do here at The Letters Page, and the placement opportunities we offer to students in the School of English.

Our Founder and Editor in Chief is Jon McGregor, he's been working with our current PhD Editor Annabele to lead a group of placement students through production, publication, marketing and editing. Giving everyone a feel for how a publishing house works together.

Both Jon and Annabel have shared some of their insights with you below, plus there are role descriptions for you to explore, and even some letters from our current team for you to open. 

Sorting through submissions in Jon McGregor’s office, Trent Building (Jon is editor of The Letters Page online journal).The Letters Page is a literary journal in letters, published by the School of English at the University of Nottingham and edited by Jon McGregor. We publish essays, stories, poetry, memoir, travelogue, and criticism; but all in the form of letters. We are interested in the literary traditions of letter-writing, and in the idea of correspondence in a digital age. http://www.theletterspage.ac.uk/

What is The Letters Page?

Jon: The basic idea of The Letters Page has always been that submissions come to us in the form of handwritten letters, and then we choose, edit and publish some of them. 

It’s a literary journal published by the School of English, which I edit with a lot of help from students. The whole principal is to give students some insight into the practicalities and creative decision making that goes into choosing, editing, and publishing other people’s work.  

That is what’s really unusual and really valuable about The Letters Page project - the focus is entirely on other people’s writing. We have the opportunity to work with a large range of writers’ work, including some very successful writers too. Some of them we’ve caught at the very beginning of their careers, and they’ve gone onto publish elsewhere. Some of them have been people who don’t necessarily publish anything else, but have just written a really interesting letter.   

If people are interested in working in publishing in any kind of context, copywriting, or in marketing, it’s a good first step to that. 

Jon McGregor

Editor in Chief at The Letters Page

Sorting through submissions in Jon McGregor’s office, Trent Building (Jon is editor of The Letters Page online journal).The Letters Page is a literary journal in letters, published by the School of English at the University of Nottingham and edited by Jon McGregor. We publish essays, stories, poetry, memoir, travelogue, and criticism; but all in the form of letters. We are interested in the literary traditions of letter-writing, and in the idea of correspondence in a digital age. http://www.theletterspage.ac.uk/

Exciting surprises along the way 

Annabel: One of our students in the publicity team wrote to a published writer called Claire Daverley.  

Claire had heard of The Letters Page but hadn’t submitted a letter to us before. So, the student wrote to Claire’s agent who said, Claire's really interested in this, could the student send over a letter about it.  

They’ve kind of had a small letter exchange between them. Claire’s asked questions and the student has replied.  

It’s really exciting in those kinds of situations, because the students are literally talking to people in the industry.

Annabel

PhD Editor at The Letters Page

Explore our student roles

Are you interested in publishing? Do you enjoy writing quickly and responsively, in a style that grips your reader? 

In this creative role you’ll work closely with our marketing and production teams to help create written content, the whole time getting a feel for how a small contemporary publishing team works together.  

Most of your time will be researching, writing, editing and publishing features on our website.  

Second to that, and among other things like reading and assessing the submissions we receive, you’ll be in a role which involves contacting and interviewing different people. In the past this has included contacting published authors and talented writers to discuss their submission, or to inform new content for the website. 

To get a real insight into the daily life of a web editor, our previous role holder has given you a detailed diary entry for you to read. Please open the diary to get a feel for what the role entails.

Read the diary to find out more...

We have a website, so the majority of the web editor’s role is to research and write features for that. Often that also includes interviews with the writers and with other people.

Jon McGregor

Are you a ‘people person’ with an interest in publicity and publishing? Would you like to get experience in working closely with people at other journals, publishers, and publicity contacts? 

In this publicity role you’ll work closely with the Marketing and Web teams, with a focus of raising the profile of The Letters Page through targeted outreach.  

Most of your time will be spent creating press releases, short features and other promotional work. You’ll also be keeping a look out for possible new contacts for us to work with, and of course, looking after the key contacts we already work with.  

You’ll also get the chance to see how your work is positively impacting us, in real time, using tracking tools and analytics to measure success. All the while experiencing what it’s like to be part of an independent publishing house. 

Our publicity team works alongside the social media marketing team, but it's more about targeted outreach. The number of letters we get varies a lot, but one of the nice things is that there’s a clear goal for the publicity people and the marketing people, who can kind of measure their success by how many submissions we get

Jon McGregor

Can you immerse yourself in the personality of The Letters Page and use it to create engaging content? Do you have an interest in learning more about social media, communication and publishing? 

In this creative role you’ll work closely with our Publicity and Web teams. Focusing on encouraging new letter submissions, and getting new readers to subscribe, by promoting what we do on our social media channels and in emails.  

As with the publicity associate role, this is a rewarding position because you can measure the success of your work by seeing how many new submissions we get, and how much engagement your work gets.  

Our previous marketing associate has written a letter to you, sharing their experience in more detail and offering some advice about the role. Please open the letter and have a read. 

Open the letter to find out more...

Our marketing team is basically the social media side of the project and they work closely with the publicity team.  

It’s a rewarding role because the number of letters we get correlates with the profile of the project, which creates a clearer goal for the publicity and marketing teams

Jon McGregor

Are you a detail-oriented person? Do you want to gain experience in publishing and production? 

The responsibility of the Production Editor is to help oversee the editing, formatting and physical production of our publication.  

Most of your time will be spent reading and assessing all our diverse submissions, picking things for publication and digging into some background research. 

In this practical role your keen eye will be required to fact-check and proofread our content. You’ll also be in a position to speak to a diverse collection of authors and writers. In the past, this has lead to previous students having some very fulfilling conversations. All while learning more and more about the production process. 

Our previous production editor has written a letter to you expressing their experiences in the role, what they have learned, and offering their advice.

Open the letter to find out more...

Students who get to work on production will be involved in choosing the letter’s we publish, editing those, working with writers directly and formatting the actual publication itself. Plus, they’ll be doing the more practical processes like proofreading and fact checking.

Jon McGregor

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Open Day June 2022