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RLF Fellows’ News: March 2025

Publishing

Susan Barker’s new novel Old Soul has been published by Penguin:

When two grieving strangers meet by chance in Osaka airport they uncover a disturbing connection. Jake’s best friend and Mariko’s twin brother each died, 6,000 miles apart, in brutal and unfathomable circumstances. Each encountered a mesmerising, dark-haired woman in the days before their deaths. A woman who came looking for Mariko – then disappeared. Jake, who has carried his loss and guilt for a decade, finds himself compelled to follow the trail. And as Jake races to discover who or what she is, she has already made her next choice. But will knowing her secret be enough to stop her?

An excerpt from Old Soul won a Northern Writers’ Award for Fiction in 2020. Old Soul was a Guardian Book of the Week in February.

Miranda Miller’s latest book, When I Was, has been published by Barbican press:

This is a genteel family in gentle crisis as they must move from a large house to a tiny flat. Viola’s Anglo-Indian mother hoped for much more from life. While her father gets involved in ghosting the memoir of a chorus girl who married a millionaire, Viola burrows into the adventures of storybooks and finds friendship and danger in 1950s London with its bomb sites, air raid shelters and attitudes to gender, race, class and sex vividly present.

The launch of When I Was is on 18 March at The Owl Bookshop in London. Miranda will be in conversation with Maggie Hamand. More information here.

Dan Richards‘ new book Overnight: Journeys, Conversations and Stories After Dark is published by Canongate on 27 March.

Overnight is an exploration of night – the nocturnal world, insomnia, the creative potential of the dark hours, the work that happens at night to keep the modern world moving.

Dan will be appearing at bookshops across the UK to talk about Overnight throughout March, including Portobello Books in Edinburgh on 20 March.

Broadcasts

Claudine Toutoungi‘s two-part audio dramatisation of Josephine Tey’s novel Brat Farrar – a taut, psychological, Golden Age mystery – will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 9 and 16 March.

Directed by Gemma Jenkins, this doppelganger drama of stolen identity stars Levi Brown, Louis Landau, Kate Fleetwood and Alex Macqueen.

Listen on BBC 4, or after on BBC Sounds.

Events and appearances

Caitlin Davies will be discussing her book Private Inquiries as part of Portsmouth Book Festival’s Crime Bites series.

Private Inquiries traces the history of the UK’s female investigators, from Victorian lady sleuths to ‘busy-body spinsters’ and gun-toting modern PIs, looking at the real-life women behind the fictional tales to ask: what crimes did they solve, and where are their stories?

The online event takes place on 5 March. Buy tickets here.

On 7 March, Colin Grant hosts the latest WritersMosaic event in partnership with the British Library – Malcolm X: By any means necessary.

Writers and performers including Bonnie Greer, Gary Younge, Vanessa Kisuule and Fallé Nioke will explore the global legacy of Malcolm X as a resistance leader in this, the centenary year of Malcolm X’s birth.

For more information and to buy tickets, visit the WritersMosaic website.

Maggie Harris will launch her recent collection of poetry, I Sing to the Greenhearts – published by Seren Books – with an event in Margate on 21 March, alongside fellow poets Tracey McEvoy and Bob Walton with music from Morag Butler and Mike McEvoy.

Find tickets here.

Tom Bullough, Gwyneth Lewis, Tiffany Murray and WritersMosaic‘s Vanessa Kisuule are among the writers appearing at The Laugharne Weekend, an annual literary and arts festival help in the town of Laugharne in West Wales.

Festival founder Richard Thomas explains:“The original name for Under Milk Wood was ‘The Town That Was Mad’ – and Laugharne still is, in the best possible way. The vibe is completely still here. The main street, the square, the castle – they haven’t changed at all. If Dylan Thomas came back today he’d instantly recognise it.”

The festival celebrates RLF grants beneficiary Dylan Thomas and takes place from 28–30 March.

For more information, visit the Laugharne Weekend website.

Jasbinder Bilan will be discussing her new novel, Nush and the Stolen Emerald, at the Oxford Literary Festival on 31 March.

An interactive and visual talk aimed at school groups of students aged 8-12, the event will see Jasbinder share her inspiration, the story of her journey towards becoming an award-winning writer, and read snippets from Nush and the Stolen Emerald.

More information here.

Also appearing at Oxford Literary Festival on 31 March is Clare Chambers, who will be discussing her latest novel, Shy Creatures:

Thirty-something art therapist in a psychiatric hospital Helen Hansford has been having a long affair with a charismatic and married doctor in 1960s Croydon. They are called to the discovery of a mute 37-year-old man with a beard down to his waist who has clearly been shut up in a house for decades. It emerges that he is a talented artist, and Helen is determined to uncover his story.

Clare will be in conversation with Lucy Atkins. Buy tickets here.

Gwyneth Lewis will be at Oxford Literary Festival on 1 April discussing her new memoir, Nightshade Mother: A Disentangling, her account of growing up at the hands of a coercive and controlling mother.

Gwyneth Lewis became the first national poet of Wales in 2005, and her words are on the front of the Wales Millennium Centre. Her tenth book of poetry, First Rain, will be published later in 2025. Nightshade Mother: A Disentangling is a memoir co-written with her younger self, about the power of art and language and about coming home after a lifetime of exile from oneself.

Gwyneth will be in conversation with director of the Oxford Centre for Life-writing, Dr Kate Kennedy. Buy tickets here.

Marcus Chown will discuss his latest work in A Crack in Everything: How Black Holes Came in from the Cold at Oxford Literary Festival on 3 April.

As a science writer and broadcaster, Marcus says says the answer to mankind’s most enduring questions – what is space? what is time? where did the universe come from? – may lie in black holes. He will discuss the discovery of black holes and the enigma that could unlock the answers to the most profound questions about the universe.

Buy tickets here.

Awards

Edson Burton and Satinder Chohan have been shortlisted for the prestigious Tinniswood Award for the best audio drama script of 2024 with their BBC Radio 4 plays Man Friday and Southall Uprising.

Of Man Friday, Edson Burton’s re-imagining of Daniel Defoe’s classic story, the judges said: “A hugely entertaining take on Robinson Crusoe. Friday is an upper-class castaway outraged by Crusoe’s entitled behaviour. A slow burn brilliantly achieved, this play skilfully uses the inspiration of a classic tale to reframe assumptions about race and class in a witty and engaging way”.

Of Southall Uprising, Satinder Chohan’s drama based on those protesting the April 1979 National Front rally in Southall and police brutality that led to the death of New Zealand teacher Blair Peach, the judges said: “A vivid snapshot in time which effortlessly balances the technical difficulties of immersing the listener in fast moving events across multiple locations while engaging us in individual characters’ stories to convey the urgency of community action and collective loss.”

The winner of the Tinniswood Award 2025 will be announced on 30 March. Also shortlisted are Robert Forrest and Dan Rebellato. The Tinniswood Award was established by the WGGB and The Society of Authors to celebrate high standards in radio drama and perpetuate the memory of writer Peter Tinniswood (1936-2003). More information here.

Judith Allnatt’s flash fiction story War Bride – a tale told in under 250 words – has won third prize in the Edinburgh Flash Fiction Awards.

Part of the annual Edinburgh Writing Awards, the Flash Fiction Awards were judged by Meg Pokrass.

You can read Judith’s story here, and find out more about the awards on the Scottish Arts Trust website.

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