ABOUT PROPEL MAGAZINE
Launched in Summer 2022, by poet and publisher Anthony Anaxagorou, and run since September 2026 by the Centre for Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge, Propel Magazine is a literary magazine showcasing new writing at an impressively high standard and acting as a free and open resource for editors, readers and curators alike. Propel will continue to feature excellent poetry by emerging poets who have yet to publish a first full-length collection. In addition to poetry, the magazine will expand its invitation to prose writers, including those who write fiction, creative non-fiction, and hybrid work, who also have yet to publish a first book.
Submissions will open to emerging writers worldwide, and Master’s in Creative Writing students at Cambridge will work closely with each issue’s guest editor to select the best international writing every submission period. Propel Magazine and the University of Cambridge’s collaboration began as a joint project, taking the shape of our first ever Propel Cambridge Poetry Prize in 2026, which was judged by Bhanu Kapil. This prize will also continue in 2027, with Anthony Anaxagorou serving as the next judge.
GUEST EDITORS 2023–2026
MARY JEAN CHAN
ISSUE ONE, September 2022
Mary Jean Chan is the author of Flèche, published by Faber & Faber (2019) and Faber USA (2020). Flèche won the 2019 Costa Book Award for Poetry and was shortlisted in 2020 for the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize, the Jhalak Prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Poetry Prize. In 2021, Flèche was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist. Chan won the 2018 Geoffrey Dearmer Prize and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 2017 and 2019, receiving an Eric Gregory Award in 2019.
JEREMY NOEL-TOD
ISSUE TWO, November 2022
Jeremy Noel-Tod teaches in the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia and was the Sunday Times poetry critic from 2013 to 2021. He is the editor of The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem (2018), the Complete Poems of RF Langley (2015), and The Oxford Companion to Modern Poetry (2013).
REBECCA TAMÁS
ISSUE THREE, January 2023
Rebecca Tamás is the author of the poetry collection WITCH (Penned in the Margins, 2019), which was a Poetry Society Choice and a Paris Review Staff Pick. Rebecca's essay collection Strangers: Essays on the Human and Nonhuman (Makina Books, 2020); was longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2021. She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at City University, London.
JACK UNDERWOOD
ISSUE FOUR, March 2023
Jack Underwood is a poet, writer and critic. He author of Happiness (Faber, 2015), Solo for Mascha Voice (Test Centre, 2018) and A Year in the New Life (Faber, 2021). His debut work of non-fiction, NOT EVEN THIS, was published by Corsair in 2021, exploring parallels between quantum physics, black hole science, cyborgism, and the philosophies of language and knowledge and poetics, all through the lens of new parenthood. He has collaborated widely with composers and artists, and his work has been published internationally and in translation. He is co-presenter and curator of the Faber Poetry Podcast and is a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College, and is currently working on a collection of short fiction.
ALYCIA PIRMOHAMED
ISSUE FIVE, May 2023
Alycia Pirmohamed is the author of Another Way to Split Water (Polygon / Yes Yes Books, 2022), the pamphlets Hinge (Ignition Press, 2020) and Faces that Fled the Wind (BOAAT Press, 2019), and the collaborative work Second Memory (Guillemot Press, 2021), co-authored with Pratyusha. She is co-founder of the Scottish BPOC Writers Network, a co-organiser of the Ledbury Poetry Critics, and she currently teaches Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge. Alycia received an MFA from the University of Oregon and a PhD from the University of Edinburgh.
KAREN MCCARTHY WOOLF
ISSUE SIX, July 2023
Born in London to English and Jamaican parents, Karen McCarthy Woolf FRSL is the author of two poetry collections and the editor of seven literary anthologies. Shortlisted for the Forward Felix Dennis and Jerwood Prizes, her debut An Aviary of Small Birds tells the story of losing a son in childbirth and was an Observer Book of the Year. Her latest, Seasonal Disturbances, explores gentrification, the city and the sacred, was a winner in the inaugural Laurel Prize for ecological poetry and excerpted in the Financial Times and the Guardian. In 2019 she moved to Los Angeles as a Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar and Writer in Residence at the Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA, exploring the relationship between poetry, law and capitalism’s impacts on black, brown and indigenous bodies.
She has presented and performed her work at literature festivals worldwide — in Mexico, Trinidad, Jamaica, Italy, America and China at a variety of venues such as the Royal Festival Hall, Barbican and King’s Place for Poetica Electronica, which showcased music collaborations with various dance and techno producers. Her poems have been translated into Turkish, Swedish, Spanish, Polish and Dutch, produced as animated and choreographed short film, exhibited by Poems on the Underground and dropped from a helicopter over the Houses of Parliament in a poetry ‘bombing’.
Karen also writes for radio and recent highlights include a multi-authored adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando which was nominated for a BBC Audio Award in 2020 and a reversioning of Homer’s Book of the Dead in which Odysseus is reimagined as a London cab driver for BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week.
She has served as Chair and Judge of the Brunel International African Poetry Prize several times, was a judge of the National Poetry Competition in 2021 and is currently on the judging panel of the Forward Prize and Gingko Prize.
After returning to the UK she travelled to Brazil in 2021 as an artist in residence at the Sacatar Institute in Bahia to research new work that explores sugar and its cultural and material legacies.
PASCALE PETIT
ISSUE SEVEN, September 2023
Pascale Petit was born in Paris and lives in Cornwall. She is of French, Welsh, and Indian heritage. Her eighth collection of poetry, Tiger Girl (Bloodaxe, 2020), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize and for Wales Book of the Year. Her seventh, Mama Amazonica (Bloodaxe, 2017) won the inaugural Laurel Prize, the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, and was a Poetry Book Society Choice. Four previous collections were shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Her debut novel, My Hummingbird Father, is forthcoming from Salt Publishing in 2024.
HARRY JOSEPHINE GILES
ISSUE EIGHT, November 2023
Harry Josephine Giles is a writer and performer from Orkney, living in Leith. Their verse novel Deep Wheel Orcadia was published by Picador in October 2021 and won the 2022 Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction book of the year. Their poetry collections The Games (Out-Spoken Press, 2018) and Tonguit (Freight Books 2015) were between them shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Saltire Prize and the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award. They have a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Stirling. Their show Drone debuted in the Made in Scotland Showcase at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe and toured internationally, and their performance What We Owe was picked by the Guardian's best-of-the-Fringe 2013 roundup – in the “But Is It Art?” category. www.harryjosephine.com
FRAN LOCK
ISSUE NINE, January 2024
Fran Lock is a some-time itinerant dog whisperer, the author of numerous chapbooks and thirteen poetry collections, most recently Hyena! (Poetry Bus Press, 2023), shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2023, and ‘a disgusting lie’: further adventures through the neoliberal hell-mouth (Pamenar Press, 2023). White/ Other (The 87 Press, 2022), a collection of hybrid lyric riff, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Fran was the Judith E. Wilson Poetry Fellow at Cambridge University (2022-23), researching feral subjectivity through the lens of the medieval bestiary. Fran’s other work includes the chapbook Forever Alive (Dare-Gale Press, 2022), and the critically acclaimed work of ‘queer mourning’ Hyena! Jackal! Dog! (Pamenar Press, 2021).
Fran is Commissioning Editor at the radical arts and culture cooperative Culture Matters, where she most recently edited the mammoth anthology The Cry of the Poor (2021). She is a member of the new Editorial Advisory Board for the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry, and she edits the Soul Food column for Communist Review. Fran teaches online for Poetry School, and she is the co-host of the cross-cultural poetry podcast Social yet Distanced with her cousin Jack Varnell. Fran is a super proud pit bull parent. She lives in Kent.
INUA ELLAMS
ISSUE TEN, March 2024
Born in Nigeria, Inua Ellams is a poet, playwright & performer, graphic artist & designer and founder of: The Midnight Run (an arts-filled, night-time, urban walking experience.), The Rhythm and Poetry Party (The R.A.P Party) which celebrates poetry & hip hop, and Poetry + Film / Hack (P+F/H) which celebrates Poetry and Film. Identity, Displacement & Destiny are reoccurring themes in his work, where he tries to mix the old with the new: traditional African oral storytelling with contemporary poetics, paint with pixel, texture with vector. His books are published by Flipped Eye, Akashic, Nine Arches, Penned In The Margins, Oberon & Methuen.
IAN McMILLAN
ISSUE ELEVEN, May 2024
Ian McMillan is a poet and performer from Yorkshire, as well as a playwright, journalist, and all-round poetry whirlwind. As well as writing and performing his own work, for both adults and children, he is a tireless champion of poetry and the spoken arts, and a campaigner for the arts to be for everybody. He has been a poet, broadcaster, commentator and programme maker for over 35 years. His first collection, The Changing Problem, was published by Carcanet in 1980, and since then he has published nearly thirty books. He presents The Verb every week on BBC R3 and he’s a regular on BBC Breakfast, Coast, Pick of the Week, You & Yours, Last Word and The Arts Show. Previously, Ian was resident poet for English National Opera, UK Trade & Investment, Yorkshire TV’s Investigative Poet and Humberside Police’s Beat Poet. He’s been a castaway on Desert Island Discs and a subject of The South Bank Show. Cats make him sneeze. X: @IMcMillan
TISHANI DOSHI
ISSUE TWELVE, July 2024
Tishani Doshi is an award-winning poet, novelist and dancer whose work centres the body as a vehicle to explore gender, sexuality and power. Her publications include Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods, Small Days and Nights, and A God at the Door. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Visiting Professor at NYU Abu Dhabi.
HELEN MORT
ISSUE THIRTEEN, January 2025
Helen Mort is a poet and novelist. Her collections Division Street, No Map Could Show Them and The Illustrated Woman are published by Chatto & Windus. She’s a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and teaches at Manchester Metropolitan University.
SUSANNAH DICKEY
ISSUE FOURTEEN, March 2025
Susannah Dickey is a writer from Derry. Her debut collection of poetry, ISDAL (Picador, 2023), won the inaugural PEN Heaney Prize and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the John Pollard Prize. Her third novel, to pieces, will be published in April 2026 by Bloomsbury.
SANAH AHSAN
ISSUE FIFTEEN, May 2025
Dr Sanah Ahsan is a poet, liberation psychologist and educator. Their work draws on therapeutics, embodiment and poetics as life-affirming practices. Some of Sanah’s media work includes writing for The Guardian and presenting a Channel 4 documentary on the over-medicalisation of people’s distress. Sanah is working on a non-fiction book about the politics of distress, and society’s relationship with unruly emotions. Sanah’s debut poetry collection, I cannot be good until you say it, was published with Bloomsbury March 2024, and is a meditation on Islam, queerness and goodness. It has been shortlisted for The Forward Prize, and selected as one of The Guardian’s Best Poetry books.
