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RLF Writers’ News: May 2026

RLF and WritersMosaic events at Hay Festival

On Saturday 30 May, the RLF’s Chief Executive Edward Kemp will be joined by some very special guests for an event hosted by Waterstones Children’s Laureate  Frank Cottrell-Boyce, co-writer of the film Goodbye Christopher Robin, to celebrate 100 years of Winnie-the-Pooh.

Winnie-the-Pooh author AA Milne is one of a number of writers to have donated a portion of their Estate to the RLF, meaning the Winnie-the-Pooh stories have helped us to support thousands of writers over the past several decades. So we’re delighted to be joining the celebrations at this year’s Hay Festival.

Joining us will be actors Emma Thompson and Paterson Joseph, author/illustrators Cressida Cowell and Chris Riddell, and Jane Riordan, author of the Winnie-the-Pooh prequel and sequel story collections. This very special Winnie-the-Pooh-inspired party will feature readings, live illustrations inspired by original Winnie-the-Pooh illustrator EH Shepard and perhaps even a spot of hunny.

Buy tickets for A Celebration of Winnie-the-Pooh’s 100th Anniversary here on the Hay Festival website.

WritersMosaic will also be chairing two special events at this year’s Hay Festival.

On Friday 29 May, WritersMosaic director Colin Grant will be joined by writers Suzanne Harrington, Eric Ngalle Charles and Amanda Vilanova for What We Leave We Carry: Voices of Migration to Britain.

Their discussion will feature candid and moving stories of migration – foundational tales of arriving in a new land, along with rarely spoken tales of love and loss. This is a chance to listen to Britain, in all its richness and complexity.

Find tickets and more information here.

On Saturday 30 May WritersMosaic presents Iranian Women’s Voices, an afternoon of poetry, film and Iranian music featuring writer and translator Shara Atashi, poet author Sana Nassari, poet and performer Marjorie Lotfi and musician Roya Arab.

Find tickets and more information here.

Also appearing at this year’s Hay Festival are:

• Ian McMillan presents The Verb, BBC Radio 4’s poetry performance and discussion programme from the Hay Festival on Friday 22 May. Tickets here.
• WritersMosaic‘s Yvvette Edwards in conversation with Bernardine Evaristo on Saturday 23 May. Tickets here.
• James Hanning talks to RLF Fellow Horatio Clare with guests Derek Addyman and Anne Brichto on Monday 25 May. Tickets here.
• RLF Fellow Wren James introduces their debut graphic novel The Victors on Wednesday 27 May. Tickets here.
• Sara Wheeler, herself a travel writer and mountaineer, discusses her biography of climber and journalist Jan Morris: A Life on Thursday 28 May. Tickets here.
• Colin Grant will chair a talk with Jarred McGinnis, winner of the Eccles Institute & Hay Festival Global Writer’s Award, who will discuss his memoir There is No Meant to Be, on Friday 29 May. Tickets here.
• Tiffany Murray will be charing a number of events, including Long Going: A Daughter’s Memoir of a Dad Who Drank with Sophie Calon; My Cantopop Nights: A Memoir with Emma-Lee Moss (aka Emmy the Great); and Matters of Taste: Thirsty – 100 Great Wines and Stories with Tom Gilbey, all on Saturday 30 May.

Publishing

Hanna Komar’s new book When I’m Out of Here: Staying Human in a Dictator’s Jail is out now, published by Skaryna Press.

A literary prison memoir set during the 2020 Belarusian uprising, it follows a young poet imprisoned for peaceful protest along with thousands of other ordinary people. Inside the crowded cells, she encounters people from every walk of life – teachers, grandmothers, students – each with their own story of resistance.

A testimony to the role of art under dictatorship, the book interweaves her story and theirs into a powerful portrait of courage under repression.

Alex Wong’s new book Some Poems by Thomas Hood, Selected and Introduced by Alex Wong is published by Headless Poet Press, a small press specialising in the art of the introduction, on 15 May.

Poet and author Thomas Hood (1799-1845) is an RLF beneficiary remembered chiefly for puns and poems of social conscience. He was one of the most popular British poets of his time. In this selection, Alex Wong teases out Hood’s singular achievement, drawing our attention to the poet’s most ambitious work — serious in its artistic ambitions, whatever the tone — in order to reveal a distinct sensibility in which melancholy and ‘idiot laughter’ are never far apart.

Hilary Davies’ new collection of poetry Compass Light has been published by Renard Press.

Described by poet and translator Martyn Crucefix as a selection “replete with love, loss, place, and time, this is a collection tracing a soul’s journey, and the self’s transformation”, Compass Light is a wide-ranging collection that illuminates the dazzling richness of how we perceive time, and how it makes us who and what we are.

Harry Man‘s new pamphlet impressions is a collection of poetry on artificial intelligence and its use of stolen artistic work.

Collected: Live 

This month’s Collected: Live panel events include:

Beating Writer’s Block: Conversations with Writers at Middlesbrough Library on Saturday 16 May. Writers Bridget Deane, Tahmina Ali and Harry Man will begin by reading short pieces from the RLF archive, before opening up a lively conversation about the realities of the writing desk, followed by a Q&A. Tickets here.

A Day in the Life of a Writer at The Bookshop in Falmouth on Monday 18 May. Writers Sarah Duncan, Rebecca Tantony and Anna Wilson will read a short original piece in response to the theme, followed by a dynamic, chaired discussion reflecting on craft, hindsight, identity, and the evolving writer’s voice. Tickets here.

Other Festivals

Horatio Clare is appearing at the Huddersfield Literature Festival to discuss researching and writing his Nero Award shortlisted book We Came By Sea on Saturday 9 May at 2pm.

We Came By Sea tells the stories of the volunteers who help thousands of people who attempt to cross the English Channel every year, from the lifeboat crews to the countless unrecognised British people giving their all to help the vulnerable and desperate.

For tickets and more information, visit the Huddersfield Literature Festival website.

Awards and appointments

Rachel Seiffert‘s novel Once the Deed is Done has been shortlisted for the 2026 Walter Scott Prize.

The judges said of the book: “A story not often explored in fiction is the fate of millions of slave workers imported into Germany by the Nazis from Ukraine, Russia and Poland, to be worked, often to death, in German factories. Rachel Seiffert’s outstanding novel is set in a workers’ camp recently liberated by the British to become a camp for displaced persons. The men, women, and even children, have suffered appalling deprivation. Now, helped by Ruth, a British Red Cross officer, they must come to terms with what has happened to them as they face an uncertain future. But the camp is just outside a small German town, and the townspeople too are adjusting to the reality of their defeat.”

Now in its sixteenth year and honouring the achievements of the founding father of the historical novel, the Walter Scott Prize is unique for rewarding writing of exceptional quality which is set in the past. The 2026 winner will be announced on 12 June.

More information here.

Gwendoline Riley is one of eight recipients of Yale’s 2026 Windham Campbell Prizes, each of whom receives $175,000 (£130,000) in recognition of their life’s work. One of the two winners in the fiction category and the only UK recipient of this year’s awards.

According to the prize citation, “Gwendoline Riley is celebrated for her oeuvre of short novels, including “First Love” (2017), in which she explores women’s experiences in the early 21st century. Her novels “lay bare the cruelties and complicities of intimacy in prose that is at once meticulous and ruthless”. Her novels, including Cold Water (2002), Joshua Spassky (2007), My Phantoms (2021) and The Palm House (2026) have won the Betty Trask award, Somerset Maugham award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial prize.

For more information, visit the Windham-Campbell Prizes website.

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