Literary launch hopes to tackle a 'class crisis' in UK publishing

The UK's writing and publishing industries are in crisis, with the stories and experiences of working-class people increasingly not being heard, the backers of a new literary initiative have said.

- Mark Brown

Launched today, the Bee is a UK-wide enterprise that will include a literary magazine, website, podcast and outreach programme. It is supported by the actor Michael Sheen and led by the Newcastle-based charity New Writing North, which described it as a response to the "class crisis in the UK writing industries".

The magazine's editor will be Richard Benson, who helmed the Face in the 1990s. He said it was well known that representation in the creative industries was "massively skewed", but that in writing and publishing it was "even more skewed".

"It is not in a good place," he said. "Why do we accept that it's normal to have good working-class representation in music, but you wouldn't have that in publishing? There's no real reason why that should be the case.