Melvin Burgess is held by many as the godfather of young adult fiction and is the author of books such as Junk, Bloodtide, Doing It and Nicholas Dane. As the honorary chair of our second anthology, Melvin had this encouragement for the selected authors and anyone looking to become a published writer.

Melvin writes:
Perhaps the most wonderful thing about writing books, and certainly the most wonderful about reading new voices for books, is the sense of how hugely prolific and adventurous imaginative fiction in this country is. Making movies costs so much; they are rarely about anything except shoring up the demographic, confirming a vision we already have. TV, too, costs the earth, and with advertising revenues going down the pan, broadcasters are more reluctant than ever to lift a finger unless they can be promised a large audience. Only with books can you take a chance on a dream. Everything else is the art of the possible. Only books try the impossible – only books try to throw a lasso around the moon.

The sheer abundance, the variety and scale of imaginative exploration in stories, is reflected in this collection. Politics, fantasy, sci-fi, personal relationships; addiction, running away, finding yourself – you name it, it’s here. Surely this is why books are still such a force in our imaginations and our understanding. The ability to explore fictionally is available to us all. You don’t need a team to write a book, you don’t need to be rich – you just need to have something to say and the ability to say it. In books, everything and anything is possible. A fictional exploration can reveal a great deal about ourselves and the world around us – and sometimes we discover that those impossible dreams have more truth in them than we ever imagined.

That, of course, does not mean that getting published is easy – still less, making a living out of it. Despite that huge abundance, it’s a hard thing to do. It took me years from the desire, when I was nineteen, to the event, when I was well over thirty. My first publication was in an anthology like this, a book published by the London Magazine, which gave so many writers a launch pad back in the 1980s. Shortly after, my first book was accepted – a big day in my life. Overnight, I was turned from a wannabe to a can-do. The publication of this anthology is a huge encouragement and a step forward to the writers of the future portrayed in its pages. Naturally they will be looking forward to landing their first commercial contract, and for many of them it’s clear the wait will not be that long.

For those looking forward to getting published, I’d like to offer a simple piece of advice: never give up. I’ve seen so many people wanting to write over the years, and the ones who succeed are not necessarily those with the great brains or huge skills – it’s those who simply keep at it. Writing professionally is a difficult thing to do, but not because you have to be enormously clever. It’s difficult because you have to become enormously accomplished. In this sense, it’s like learning an instrument or a language; you have to practise. Keep reading, and above all keep writing, and you will get there in the end.