Welcome to our new columnists
VIEWPOINT: New columnists for The Hull Story, from left, Vicky Foster, Joe Hakim, Sam Hawcroft, and Russ Litten. Picture by Neil Holmes Photography
We are delighted to welcome four new columnists to The Hull Story.
They are Vicky Foster, Joe Hakim, Sam Hawcroft, and Russ Litten.
As well as being great writers, they are all sons and daughters of Hull.
Each will bring their own unique voice and perspective, adding depth and variety to our exclusive content, with at least one column published each week.
Vicky, an award-winning playwright, will be writing about things to see and do in Hull and East Yorkshire in her column, This Place.
Writer and broadcaster Joe will bring his extensive knowledge of Hull’s arts and culture scene to his column, The Joe Must Go On.
Journalist, musician, and Hull City fan Sam will be writing about the club in her column, Eye Of The Tigers.
Russ, a writer and musician, has a roving brief on current affairs for his column, The Crow’s Nest.
WELCOME ON BOARD: From left, Joe Hakim, Sam Hawcroft, Vicky Foster, and Russ Litten. Picture by Neil Holmes Photography
The first of the new columns will be published on Friday, when Joe launches The Joe Must Go On.
Find out more about our new writers here:
Vicky Foster
Vicky Foster’s play Bathwater first aired on Radio 4 in 2019, is published by Wrecking Ball Press, and won The Imison Award in 2020. Her poetry collection Changing Tides was published by King’s England Press in 2016.
She has written commissions for the BBC, Freedom Festival, Back To Ours, and Ships in the Sky. All of her work features themes of place, connection, and a deep love for her city of Hull and county of East Yorkshire. She will be writing about her favourite places, and discovering more, for The Hull Story.
Joe Hakim
Joe Hakim was a featured poet at the BBC Contains Strong Language spoken word festival in Hull in 2017 and 2018, and has performed at venues and festivals around the UK, including Latitude, Big Chill, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. His work has featured on The Verb on BBC Radio 3 and the Cerys Matthews show on BBC 6 Music.
As an educator, he has worked as a writer-in-residence for First Story in secondary schools and colleges in Hull and East Yorkshire since 2017. He co-produced the regional heat for the Roundhouse Poetry Slam at Hull Truck in June 2019.
His first novel The Community, a sci-fi/horror book, was published by Wild Pressed Books in 2019. It was longlisted for the 2020 British Science Fiction Awards.
Joe presented and produced Culture Night, BBC Radio Humberside’s weekly arts and culture show, from May 2019 until September 2020.
Sam Hawcroft
Sam Hawcroft has been a journalist for more than 20 years and a Hull City fan for a fair bit longer than that.
After starting out writing football book reviews for the matchday programme, then bewildering her Hull University lecturers with her final-year dissertation on soccer literature, she went on to work as a senior sub-editor for the Hull Daily Mail and PA Media.
For nearly a decade she manned the mixing desk at both Boothferry Park and the KCOM Stadium, going from the ridiculous to the sublime in terms of the technology at her disposal.
She now runs her own publishing, design and editorial services business, and, as her alter-ego Sam Martyn, is also a traditional folk singer and musician.
Russ Litten
Russ Litten is the author of the novels Scream If You Want To Go Faster, Swear Down, and Kingdom, the short story collection We Know What We Are, and a volume of poetry, I Can See The Lights.
He has collaborated on spoken word / electronica recordings and performance as part of Cobby & Litten and Oddfellows Union. He also plays bass in and contributes lyrics to the Hull band Oceaneers.
Russ spent ten years as a Writer In Residence at various prisons in the north of England. He continues to hold writing workshops in the local community.