Macmillan Author Academy 2025

Following the success of our initial Macmillan Education Author Academy in January 2024, the Caribbean team has held a second and more extensive week of training for a new cohort of prospective Caribbean authors.

The approach taken for this academy kept the same mandate and aspiration as our Jan 2024 iteration; that training local Caribbeans to write for us will better reflect life within the Caribbean region, and be far more relatable and relevant to the teachers and students who use our books.

We again sent out the call for aspiring authors, and received a huge response from around the Caribbean, nearly 400 responses to date. From these, we contacted those with relevant experience in Agricultural Science – the subject of our proposed upcoming series. Respondents were set a task to produce two sample lessons, written to an author brief, before revising their sample by following feedback provided by the editorial team, all accomplished within specific deadlines.

This year, the academy took place in Castries, St Lucia. We increased the duration from 3 and a half days to 5, adding much needed time for the delegates to practise their writing skills. We could also ensure that we discussed the detail each new topic together, and provide immediate feedback to the authors. The extra time allowed us to spend more time exploring and familiarising the author delegates to specific areas of training, such as unit templates, the emerging use of AI, how to avoid plagiarism, briefing images and fitting a writing schedule in alongside professional and personal commitments. These were all key points of feedback from our internal review of the 2024 academy workshops, and were also highlighted by feedback from the 2024 authors themselves.

For example, on the first day, the authors each wrote a draft feature (fun fact box, introduction, topic-focused careers, etc.) and discussed these as a group. As this discussion took place, one of the development editors typeset these features into a draft template and added development feedback. This was then reviewed together at the end of the day, to demonstrate the publishing process and the types of feedback that would be provided during development. We also arranged some field trips to a St Lucian local TVET Agriculture school, and a local fruit and poultry farm, which will both make wonderful case study opportunities for the upcoming series!

As the graduation ceremony from the previous academy was such a positive end to the workshops, we again asked our publisher James Orr to present certificates to our second cohort of Macmillan author academy graduates. From left to right, James Orr (Macmillan Education), Simon Drakes from Grenada, Krystal Cohen from Jamaica, Dayanand Lallbachan from Guyana, and Dianne Mahabir-Joseph and Amelia Mohamed from Trinidad & Tobago.

With our second class of author academy graduates now ready and soon to start writing, we eagerly await the opportunity to read their fantastic first published work as Macmillan authors!

Written by Christian Ashton, Development Editor