Bristol’s Rife Magazine to publish book

Bristol’s Rife Magazine, an online platform for young people aged 13-19 to get their creative work published and to learn practical digital skills, have announced plans to create a book of essays.

Rife: 20 Stories From Britain’s Youth will collect 20 young people’s essays about money, mental health, sex, gender, equality, education, crime and the future, and aims to show what it’s really like to grow up in the current climate.

Award-winning Bristol-based author, Nikesh Shukla, will be collaborating with the team of young journalists behind Rife Magazine to see the project through. Rife is a Watershed project supported by Bristol Youth Links in partnership with Bristol City Council. 

Against the tumultuous backdrop of 2017, the stories set to appear in the book prove that young people are full of ideas and aspirations.

Nikesh said: “The voice of this generation is noticeably absent from mainstream media, online comment pieces and from news reports. The country is pretty messed up and our future is looking gloomy. Britain’s young people have to live with the repercussions of what the older generation have done – they didn’t vote for Brexit, or vote in this Conservative government, and you know what? They’re sick of being talked about instead of talked to.

We see countless think-pieces trying to work out how millennials think. Rife Magazine is all about centring the voices of as many young people as possible, and we thought it was about time we took these exciting voices and gave them a platform to talk about what Britain looks like now. I particularly love the essay format because it allows writers to tell their stories in their own voices, and through that lens, we get to peer outside our own echo chambers.”

Sammy Jones previously worked at Rife as a young content creator, and will be co-editing the book with Nikesh. She said: “It’s never been harder to be young, so it’s no wonder we’re angry. One in four people under 25 will be affected by mental illness. As university fees rise, job opportunities dry up and houses get more expensive, we are facing an ever-expanding chasm of doubt, instability and buckling down for a really, really rough time for the rest of our lives.”

The writers commissioned so far are all aged under 24, and include Ella Marshall, Liv Little, Amber Kirk-Ford, June Eric-Udorie, Rosalind Jana, Ailsa Fineron and many more. Some have previously collaborated with Rife in Bristol, while others have been chosen for their outstanding contributions to important online and print conversations. What they all have in common are their essential insights into what it means to be young in Britain right now.

The project will be crowdfunded by the public and published by Unbound later in 2017.

Find out more and support the book: www.unbound.com/books/rife

Read more: 10 questions – Nikesh Shukla