MK Lit Fest: Tales from the City with Roy Nevitt – MinK2024 Creative Writing Competition Launch

In the past few decades, Milton Keynes has evolved into a bold new city with its own cultural identity. Roy Nevitt has been, for many, the city’s cultural godfather, and this year he’s joining MK Lit Fest to speak about the city’s extraordinary evolution – and to launch our new creative writing competition.

Since we ran our first competition in 2018, we’ve published three anthologies of the winning and selected entries, as submitted by local poets and flash fiction writers. In celebration of this trove of verbal riches, you’ll hear readings from past writers as part of this launch event. 

For 2024, MK Lit Fest is adopting ‘Tales from the City’ as the theme for a flash fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry competition. As before, we’re inviting entries in two age categories – 14-19 and 19+. And we’re adding a third genre category: as well as poems (of up to 40 lines) or flash fiction (of up to 500 words), local writers can now submit short pieces of creative non-fiction (up to 500 words). Entry is free, and you may interpret the theme however you wish.

About Roy Nevitt
Roy moved to Stony Stratford in 1967, initially to work as a lecturer in drama at North Bucks College of Education. After three years in the USA and eighteen months in East London, he returned to MK as Director of Drama at Stantonbury Campus where, with his late wife Maggie, he began to build up community drama in the new city.

In 1984, with community worker Roger Kitchen, he set up Living Archive, expressly designed to capture people’s personal stories of their lives, particularly those in, or moving to MK, so they would not be lost. One of the earliest pioneers of the community theatre movement, his large-scale community musical documentary plays were based on local stories from Wolverton and New Bradwell: All Change, Your Loving Brother Albert, Days of Pride, Sheltered Lives, Nellie and The Jovial Priest. They remain extraordinarily successful and have greatly helped the infant city gain a sense of ‘self’. He also wrote the community drama The Burston School Strike.

Along the way Roy has been a Member of the Arts Council of Great Britain Drama panel and Chairman of their Drama Projects Committee; Chairman of East Midlands Arts Drama Panel, Member of South Arts Drama Panel; Co-initiator of MK Arts Association, forerunner of Arts Gateway MK; Chairman of MK Theatre and Gallery Company; and awarded an Honorary Degree of Master of the Open University.

MK Lit Fest is delighted that Roy has agreed to bring his unmatched experience of writing about and for MK, and of helping young people find their creative voice, to our call for contributions to MinK2024.