We stopped accepting pieces of life writing for our Women’s Words Mcr archive at midnight on the 24th of November, last Friday.

If you didn’t manage to send us your story by midnight, don’t despair. Please do complete your submission and hang on to it. We are dreaming of a stage two for the project and we hope you will help us add and build on the amazing writing we have already collected.

Just to give you a very rough estimate of numbers, we’ve had over two hundred and fifty submissions. If you could see me now, you’d know I’ve got this massive grin on my face as I type. This is a fabulous result and we can’t wait for you to read the archives and bask in the beauty, authenticity, power and truth shared in the writing we’ve received. It is truly humbling.

Since then, everything has been collected and documented, and on Sunday, we the Women’s Words Mcr steering committee got down to the exciting, enviable and enjoyable task of reading the submissions that had come in for the archives

The hardest part of being on the Women’s Words project is trying to decide what goes into the new, re-imagined Suffragette. So many amazing life writing submissions. This archive is going to be such a super record of women’s experiences of living, working and growing in Manchester in 2017!

It has been a privilege to work with so many of you. We’ve had such amazing stories. Thank you, women of Manchester, for your support in making this a really comprehensive capture of your lives living, working and growing in our city.

For those who don’t know, three pieces of life writing will end up being part of the Suffragette magazine. Other creative submissions will all go into the archive. However, so many pieces of work are so noteworthy that we are eager to use as much as we can in as many ways as we can to showcase the skills of all our participants and truly demonstrate what we’ve learned about the women of our city. So, watch this space as we design and craft a beautiful piece of art in the form of the Suffragette magazine that will house a tiny selection of the archive.

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