About Us
Bluebell Magazine is a dynamic platform showcasing new talent from around the world. Our editors, from the UK, China, India and the US, met at the University of East Anglia’s Creative Writing Master’s Programme. We were inspired to build an international community of writers across genres who bring new perspectives to challenge, complicate and expand traditional narratives. We are looking for high-quality writing that pushes at intellectual, political and imaginative boundaries, drawing fresh voices into conversations across borders.
Bluebell Magazine is now inviting submissions. We welcome fiction and non-fiction of no more than 2,500 words, as well as poetry. The submission deadline is 28/02/2025 and the first issue will be published in June, 2025.
Please read our submission guidelines. We look forward to receiving your work!
Editorial Team
Zixin Li
Editor/ Publisher
I am a nonfiction writer in both English and Chinese. I have more than twenty years of journalistic experience in China and around the world. I have covered presidential elections in the United States, France and Russia, as well as the Nobel Prize Ceremony in Sweden and Norway. In 2011, I published a book introducing the British political system to Chinese readers. In the same year, I founded SanMingZhi, an independent platform to promote literature from China to the world, which I continue managing today. I also completed the MA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of East Anglia in 2023-24.
I like to read writing about diaspora, East&Southeast Asia, Africa, and memoirs about family or self.
Maya Goel
Editor
I grew up on an organic farm in the Western Ghats of South India. I have a background in ecology and literature, and did an MPhil in Anthropocene Studies at the University of Cambridge. My passion for writing led me to do the Creative Nonfiction MA at UEA. I have previously worked as an editorial assistant on a volume of academic essays critically assessing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I’m interested in areas of art and science, queerness, girlhood, politics, rich emotional landscapes, ambiguity, and complexity.
I enjoy lyrical work invested in form, aesthetics, and strong critical inquiry. Some of my favourite writers include Virginia Woolf, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Maggie Nelson, Terry Pratchett, and Susan Abulhawa.
Reyah Martin
Editor
I am a UK-based fiction writer with a particular passion for short stories. My work has appeared in numerous publications, including Granta.
In 2018 I was shortlisted for the BBC Young Writers Award, and I was winner of the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for Europe and Canada.
I love reading work that is playful with language: full of sharp dialogue, poetic turns of phrase, and characters who leap from the page. Some of my favourite writers include Elif Shafak, Ingrid Persaud, and Claire Keegan.
I am a firm believer that stories take readers on a journey with them, and I can’t wait to see where your submissions will go.
Godess Bvukutwa
Editor
I’m a writer and feminist development practitioner from Zimbabwe.
For more than ten years I worked in the development sector in my country, with a short stint in the United States where I was a Community Solutions Fellow in 2013. I enjoy facilitating workshops for rural communities and running leadership trainings for young women and adolescent girls.
My short story A Late Arrival, published by Weaver Press, jointly won the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Prize in 2018. Previously, another short story Confessions Beyond the Tombstone won the Norma Kitson Short Story Award in 2012.
I grew up reading African writers like Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Mariama Ba and Tsitsi Dandarembga and these great writers inspired to start writing around the age of ten. I enjoy reading epic, political literary fiction that deals with intersectional oppressions. I am looking forward to reading political satires and any experimental storytelling.
My poetry has been published by Stanzas Poetry Journal and my non-fiction publications can be found online.
I have just completed a Masters degree in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) at the University of East Anglia where I was a Global Voices Scholarship recipients of 2023/24. I also hold an MSc degree in Development Studies and a BA Honours in English.
Elin Morgan
Communication Consultant
I am a writer and communications professional with almost twenty years’ experience and a specialism in arts and culture. During my career I’ve worked in-house, freelance and for agencies including Prospero Communications as a Director, Mobius Industries as PR Director and Sadler’s Wells as Head of Press, with a particular focus on messaging, copywriting and media relations. In addition to extensive experience in the culture field, I have worked with companies in sectors as varied as insurance, publishing, education and charity to help tell their stories. As a writer, I am interested in the relationship between place and people, peeling back layers of history and memory to find stories. I recently completed an MA in Creative Writing (Non-fiction) at the University of East Anglia. https://elinmorgan.co.uk/