From September 2023 – March 2024, we established our first ever Birmingham Editorial Readers Group. Supported by funding from Arts Council England, we invited keen readers from the West Midlands to help read our submissions across 6 supported sessions. Alongside insight into publishing processes and editorial decisions, BERG members selected two books for publication: Lewis Buxton’s Mate Arias (publishing July 2025) and Mark Ward’s Masters (publishing October 2025).
Although the project ended in March 2024, we still enjoy finding ways to work with these exceptional new editors and West Midlands literary partners wherever possible.
Find out more about our first group below!
Introducing our 2023-2024 BERG Cohort
Aarti Kumari
Aarti is passionate about learning about the world and other cultures through books. She wanted to share this passion with others so started her own tiktok account to share the stories she has read, the independent bookshops she has visited and the book festivals she has attended. A few months after starting this tiktok account, Aarti decided that she wanted to create a space where she could meet like-minded women who also read the same things, so started a Birmingham based bookclub called ‘Women Who Redefine Colour.’ It is a safe place for women of colour to learn from each other and the books they are reading. The club aims to read books from different authors, fiction and non fiction.
Beth Preece
Beth Preece is a trans writer currently living in Birmingham, England. Her stories can be found in the likes The Stinging Fly, Litro Magazine, and Extra Teeth. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart prize for outstanding short fiction and is a graduate from the University of Birmingham MA creative writing program. Currently, she is working on her debut short story pamphlet.
Catherine Redford
Catherine Redford is a writer, editor, researcher, and tutor based in the West Midlands. Having begun her career as an academic specialising in Romantic and Victorian literature, she turned to writing poetry after being widowed at the age of 35. Her poems have been published in a wide range of magazines and anthologies, including Under the Radar, The Storms, New Welsh Reader, Propel, Lighthouse, Ink Sweat & Tears, Black Bough Poetry, Atrium, and Alchemy Spoon. She has been longlisted in the Nine Arches Press Primers competition (2023), longlisted for the Dai Fry Award (2022), and commended in the Sussex Poetry Competition (2021). She has also published widely on nineteenth-century literature, with a particular focus on post-apocalyptic texts and the Gothic. She is an Editor at Dust Poetry Magazine.
Instagram: @catherine__redford
Ilina Jha
Ilina Jha is an English literature student, editor for Redbrick newspaper, and a writer. Her short play Conversation will be performed as a staged reading at the Birmingham Rep Theatre as part of the Kali Theatre Discovery Writers Programme.
LinkedIn: Ilina Jha – Playwright – Kali Theatre
Michelle McLean
Michelle is the author of the short story collection, Pay Day and Other Teabreak Tales. She has a plethora of poems, plays and prose waiting to be freed from her laptop, but they’re subjected to constant tinkering. When she isn’t writing, Michelle can usually be found tucked up with a book or moon gazing. She recently graduated from the University of Birmingham’s Creative Writing MA, with Distinction.
Prem Mehra
Prem read Creative Writing with English at Birmingham City University. Collaborating with the Birmingham School of Acting, he wrote the script for The White Tarpaulin, a short film directed by BAFTA-winning director Michael B. Clifford. Prem resides in the West Midlands.
We hope to be able to run more versions of the group in future, depending on the project’s success and funding opportunities. Sign up to our newsletter for first information about applying again and visit our Birmingham Editorial Readers Group landing page to see if applications are currently open.
