“We’re not. I’m obviously the shape-changing Northumbrian folk spirit, the braag who sometimes appears as four blokes under a sheet, and not someone trying to steal your laundry.”
We like spirits here at The Braag. Ghosts too. We couldn’t resist naming ourselves after one of the strangest pieces of folklore the North has to offer: the shape-changing trickster spirit, the braag; who appears variously as badly-behaved horses, fashionable calves, and on one occasion four men holding a sheet.
Also, we believe in the talent, dedication and hard work of artists in the North East and beyond, and we think they’re worth bragging about.
We want to develop emerging artists and pay them fairly for their time, as well as working alongside more established writers. It’s important to us that emerging artists—whatever that means—don’t stay that way forever, and at a time where the gap between “emerging” and “established” is wider than ever, we support artists from underrepresented backgrounds to help them get where they want to be.
We’ve done events, performances and writer’s meets but are focussing for now on:
Publishing poetry and speculative fiction through the Braag.
Carmen et Error – our quarterly micro-journal.
Who’s under the sheet?
Kym Deyn (they/she) is our founder, director and editor of The Braag and Carmen et Error. They are an award-winning writer based in Newcastle. Their pamphlets include, Dionysia from Verve Poetry press, Nine Arches’ Primers Vol. 6, Fee Fi Fo Fum published by Broken Sleep Books and Unfurl, a collaborative fiction project. They are widely published and anthologised and their speculative work is published in Strange Horizons and Hexagon SFF magazine. Originally from Teesside, they’ve been passionate about arts in the North since becoming a member of the Writing Squad’s mentorship scheme in 2016, they’re also a member of the Tees Women Poets and the co-founder of the Durham University Slam Team.
First Readers
Nathaniel Spain is a writer and designer based in the North East of England. His short fiction is published in Carmina Magazine, Gastropoda, Carmen et Error and Provenance Journal. In 2021 he released his speculative fiction chapbook Fragments, and co-authored Unfurl, published in 2023 by The Braag. He was the guest editor for Carmen et Error issue 5, and in 2023 was a reader for Hexagon Magazine and a juror for the British Fantasy Awards. His work can be found at www.nathanielspain.co.uk.
Ask Asad Kably Vestergaard is half Danish, half Pakistani, and studied English with Creative Writing and the University of Aberdeen. They have been published sporadically in smaller magazines and online exhibits like Leopard Arts, Lucent Dreaming, and Re-Analogue. They like thinking about writing, but they don’t actually do it nearly as much as they ought. Their sentences are too long, they use the thesaurus profligately, they have trouble keeping everything that they write relevant to the subject at hand, and they can play the kazoo with their nose.
Finlay Worrallo is a queer cross-arts writer studying Modern Languages at Newcastle University. He writes poetry, prose and scripts, and enjoys experimenting between and beyond established forms. His primary themes are the fluidity and flexibility of language, the relationships between things created and their creators, and the modern-day queer experience. His work is published in Crossways Magazine, VIBE, Queerlings, 14, Ink Sweat & Tears, the Braag’s speculative fiction chapbook Unfurl: Portrait of Another World, and the Emma Press’ anthology Dragons of the Prime: Poems about Dinosaurs. Instagram: @fworrallo
Shoshana Anderson is a poet currently based in London and Brighton, she is an alumna of the Barbican Young Poets and a previous captain of Durham University Slam Team. She is so bad at writing her own bios that Kym did this one.
Artist
Celestine Stilwell (he/him) is a transmasculine writer currently based in Devon. He designed our logo and several of the illustrations in use on The Braag and Carmen et Error. His writing has been featured in publications such as ‘The North’, ‘Butcher’s Dog’ and ‘BullshitLit’ as well as being nominated for the Forward Prize 2022. As well as writing poetry, Celestine writes script and his work has been performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He is currently in the process of working on his debut screenplay and pamphlet. You can find his artwork @rattatittytat on Instagram and Etsy.
© The Braag CIC 2024