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RLF Writers’ News: January 2026

New Year Honours List 2026

We’re delighted to offer our congratulations to two RLF and WritersMosaic writers honoured in this year’s New Year Honours list.

WritersMosaic’s Ekow Eshun, writer, curator and former Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, received an OBE for services to the Arts.

Eshun’s latest book, The Strangers: Five Extraordinary Black Men and the Worlds That Made Them, featured the renowned revolutionary psychiatrist and Afro-Caribbean writer Frantz Fanon as one of its subjects. Eshun was one of ten writers to reflect on Fanon’s legacy in the most recent edition of the WritersMosaic Quarterly.

Playwright and screenwriter Ishy Din received an MBE for services to the Arts and Young People in the North East.

Din, who took part in the RLF’s Dramatic Writers Discussion last year, said he hoped the honour would inspire other people across Teesside, the area where he grew up and which still inspires much of his own work.

Din also co-directed WritersMosaic’s recent audio drama series, Mosaic Monologues.

Hopefully it will demonstrate that you can build a career if you have that resilience and keep working on it, people will recognise your efforts.

Ishy Din on being awarded an MBE, via the BBC

Publishing

Poet Neil Rollinson‘s debut novel, The Dead Don’t Bleed, has been published by Penguin.

Set against elemental landscapes, The Dead Don’t Bleed is an unflinching exploration of fraternal rivalry, family trauma and the lasting effects of a violent patriarchy. It follows the lives of brothers Frank and Gordon Bridges from the dying coalfields of Northumberland and the barren wastelands of Andalusia, as they wrestle with the legacy of their father’s gangland past.

Andrew Miller, whose book The Land in Winter was shortlisted for last year’s Booker Prize, recently featured in The Guardian’s  ‘Books of My Life’ column, talking about the books which have inspired and influenced him as a writer –  including works by Rosemary Sutcliff, EM Forster, Albert Camus and the book which made him want to be a writer, The Rainbow by RLF beneficiary DH Lawrence.

I could think of no better way to spend a life than trying to create something like this myself. It’s worth keeping in mind the shocking fact that in 1915 The Rainbow was censored, and more than 1,000 copies of it were burned. OK to send young men to die like flies in France, but a whisper of sex … No, thank you.

Andrew Miller on DH Lawrence’s The Rainbow 

Broadcasts

Rhiannon Tise and Marcy Kahan both feature on the new Audible release of three BBC Radio full-cast dramatisations of Louisa May Alcott’s novels.
Tise’s adaptation of Little Women was originally broadcast in ten parts on BBC Radio 4 in 2017, directed by Tracey Neale. Kahan’s Good Wives, originally serialised on BBC Radio 4 in 1993, was directed by Marilyn Imrie. The other dramatisation included is A Marble Woman, adapted by Lavinia Murray.

Collected: Live 

This month, Karl Whitney and Peter Kalu will join host Lizzie Nunnery for A Letter To My Younger Self: Royal Literary Fund writers in conversation, the latest Collected: Live panel event in Liverpool, on Friday 9 January.

They will read short pieces from the RLF audio archive and reflect on their own creative journey as writers. There will also be a Q&A afterwards, ahead of the next RLF North West Collected Live event.

Join the discussion at Liverpool Central Library, William Brown Street, Liverpool. Tickets here.

Events

Gillian Allnutt and WritersMosaic’s Nick Makoha will take part in the TS Eliot Prize Shortlist Readings at the Royal Festival Hall, an event hosted by poet and RLF Fellow Ian McMillan, on Sunday 18 January. Allnut will read from her shortlisted work, Lode, and Makoha from his, The New Carthaginians. The winner of the 2026 Prize will be announced the following day.

Presented in collaboration with the TS Eliot Foundation, the event will take place live at the Royal Festival Hall. Tickets are available here.  You can also watch the TS Eliot Prize Shortlist Readings live stream – more information is available here.

Productions

Oladipo Agboluaje‘s play Crown of Blood, a powerful Yoruba retelling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth set during the civil wars of 19th-century Yorubaland, will be at Sheffield Theatres’ Crucible from 2 – 7 February.

Directed by Artistic Director of Utopia Theatre Mojisola Kareem (Death and the King’s Horseman), Crown of Blood was developed with the support of the National Theatre’s Generate programme. Tickets here.

Awards

Roy Williams’ The Final Touch has been nominated for Best Original Single Drama in the 2026 BBC Audio Awards.

Broadcast as part of BBC Radio 4’s Secrets and Lies season, The Final Touch explores the present-day lives of warring brothers Robbie and Kevin Bailey. Born to West Indian parents, the play explores the reality of growing up in care, being fostered to a white couple, and the brothers’ burgeoning careers as professional footballers.

Williams’ award-winning Gatsby in Harlem, adapted from F Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel The Great Gatsby, has also been nominated in the Best Adaptation category.

Both plays were directed by Celia de Wolff.

Ed Harris’ War with the Newts, adapted from Karel Čapek’s 1936 novel, has also been nominated for Best Adaptation in the 2026 BBC Audio Awards.

Originally broadcast on Radio 3, War with the Newts is a dark satire about the destruction of mankind at the hands of a new species of newt.

The BBC Audio Awards winners will be announced on Sunday, 1 March in a ceremony at the BBC Radio Theatre. You can see the full shortlist on the BBC website.

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