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RLF Writers’ News: October 2026

Publishing

Rosemary Jenkinson’s second collection of poetry, Let Freedom Fall Upon You, has been published by Arlen House.

The collection explores the unmapped spaces of modern love and relationships, the epiphanies embedded in the natural world, the need for revolution, and the burial of troubled history in bogland.

Let Freedom Fall Upon You will be launched at the Harrison Hotel on 25 October, as part of Belfast International Arts Festival. Buy tickets here.

Michelle Lovric’s new novel, The Puffin, has been published by Salt.

Set in Venice in 1817, The Puffin follows a fingerless nobleman after he seizes a puffin that arrives mysteriously at the Rialto Market, his matrimonial tragedies and the puffin’s fervid character put the bird on a collision course with the worst and best of humanity. Described as “a genre-defying literary epic fusing the politics of coercion and surrender with the fire of resistance in a vividly imagined 19th-century Venice” the book features a cast of unforgettable characters – not all of them human.

Michelle will be speaking about The Puffin with Mark Oakley, Dean of Southwark Cathedral at a special event on 26 October. Buy tickets for Faith, Feathers & Human Skin at Southwark Cathedral here.

Lucy Strange’s new book Cut Him Out in Little Stars, her fourteenth book overall and her first Young Adult title, is out now, published by Chicken House:

“Heartbroken after the death of her fighter pilot fiancé, Juliet is sent to stay with her sister at Samphire House. But when she discovers the body of a local girl washed up on the beach, past mysteries come flooding back…”

A romance with a murder mystery twist set on the south coast of England during the Second World War, Cut Him Out in Little Stars was a Waterstones Book of the Month in September and described by The Observer as “a deeply atmospheric coming-of-age story”.

Nathalie Abi-Ezzi’s new novel, All The Lives She Lived, has been published by Legend Press:

“When her grandmother tells Doris that she isn’t the orphan she believed herself to be, and that her parents and six siblings live only streets away, Doris’ entire world is upended. Who is she? And why was she given away? Desperate for answers, Doris reinvents herself and flees England, chasing a new life in 1930’s Baghdad, but the past is never far behind…”

Spanning Birmingham, Baghdad and Beirut over much of the 20th century,  All The Lives She Lived follows Doris as she tries to outrun her past and find a place to all home.

Penny Hancock’s new psychological thriller, The Ingenious Miss Sly, has just been published:

“Vivien Sly, overlooked engineer at a prosthetics factory is fixated on her more successful colleague Marnie Laverne, wanting all Marnie’s talent and recognition for herself.  But when she persuades Marnie to move into her Bayswater flat, she doesn’t expect Marnie to come with an agenda of her own. As the coldest winter on record grips London, as new fashion, music and arts evolve under the snow, Viv’s fixation becomes obsession, and what began as dangerous, becomes deadly.”

Chris Arthur’s new collection of essays, The Slap and the Salamander, has been published by Serving House Books.

From an execution in seventeenth century Japan to a meditation on the nature of long-tailed tits, the essays in this book share a concern to recognise the extraordinary dimensions of the ordinary and take a closer look at what Alexander Smith calls “the infinite suggestiveness of common things.”

Catherine Simpson’s new memoir Sandwiched: Caring Up and Caring Down, has been published by Saraband Books. 

It tells the story of how she balanced caring for her elderly father with Alzheimer’s and her adult autistic daughter, who was going through a mental health crisis, during the pandemic. The book is described as “a memoir about when love can’t fix everything, finding joy in charity shops, kittens, unlikely friendships and the small moments that keep us going told with compassion, wit and an unflinching eye for life’s absurdities.”

RLF beneficiary Phillip Michael Shirley’s novella Darlene will be published by Foreshore Books in September, with a foreword by Professor Paula Nicolson (Royal Holloway, University of London).

The novel follows a woman recently released from a psychiatric hospital as she revisits the figures who once defined her, blurring the boundary between care and control.

Find more information on the Foreshore website.

Zoë Howe’s Dayglo: The Poly Styrene Story, a biography of punk musician Poly Styrene co-created with Poly’s daughter Celeste Bell, will be released by Omnibus Press on 8 October:

“Poly Styrene was many things: a pop star, a punk, a songwriter, a single mother, a woman of colour, a Hare Krishna convert and an artist, but she is best known as the singer of X-Ray Spex. Dayglo is the definitive statement on Poly Styrene as an artist.From growing up mixed-race in Brixton in the 1960s, to being at the forefront of the emerging punk scene in the 1970s, to balancing single motherhood with a solo music career and often debilitating mental health issues, the book honestly and openly explores Poly’s exceptional life.”

Sharon Duggal‘s new novel Light Across the Plains is published by Bluemoose Books on 8 October:

“When Simran dies in 1989, Lekha, adrift and unfulfilled, travels to Berlin to settle her estranged aunt’s affairs. Swept up in a city in flux, a brief, practical journey soon unravels as an excavation of memory, longing, and forces that shape lives across time and place. Spanning decades and continents, Light Across the Plains traces the inextricable links between three generations of a family as they push against the confines of the times they live in and cling to the choices they make”.

Sharon will be reading from Light Across the Plains at Plackitt & Booth Bookshop in Lytham, Lancashire on 19 October. Buy tickets here.

Liz Hyder‘s new young adult book, The Teller of Tall Tales, featuring illustrations by Tom de Freston, is out on 22 October, published by Pushkin Press:

“You haven’t seen Oma in years. Mum and Dad have kept your grandmother away, scared of something that happened when you were too young to remember. Once a month, you’re allowed to visit Oma at her remote cabin that feels like a dream, and she tells you a tale that transports you to a land of possibilities — of dragons and giants, gods and monsters, of wild quests and strange adventures. Yet refuses to share the most mysterious tale of all — the reason she has been absent from your life for so long. As your world fractures under pressures from home and school, could Oma’s secret unlock everything?” 

Broadcasts

Testament’s new radio drama, The Slide, takes us inside a long-overdue family reunion that becomes a funny, fraught, reckoning with housing, money, memory and the messy business of belonging, when Natty returns to her childhood home and family tensions, financial worries and one very ambitious renovation threaten to derail dinner.

Directed by Nadia Molinari, The Slide is one of six stand-alone but interconnected new plays commissioned by BBC Drama on 4 for ‘A Place Called Home’, a series of stories set inside Britain’s housing crisis, exploring ambition, resilience and the search for belonging. 

Listen on BBC Radio 4 on 7 October.

Christopher Hill’s radio drama, Hush! Hush! Whisper Who Dares! imagines an encounter between Winnie-the-Pooh artist EH Shepard and a grown-up Christopher Robin Milne. First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in July 2013, it stars Oliver Ford Davies as Ernest Shepard and Simon Treves as Christopher Milne. Directed by Peter Kavanagh for BBC Radio 4, it will broadcast on 14 October as part of BBC Radio 4’s programming to mark 100 years of Winnie-the-Pooh, written by RLF benefactor AA Milne.

More details here.

BBC Radio 4’s week of Winnie-the-Pooh programming will culminate in the broadcast of Save The Hundred Acre Wood, written by RLF Chief Executive Edward Kemp.

A new play written to mark the centenary of AA Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh, Save The Hundred Acre Wood is set in 1987, when Ashdown Forest – the real setting for the stories Milne originally told his son, Christopher Robin – was under threat of being sold off by Earl De La Warr, whose family had owned the forest for 300 years:

“As the clock ticks down to the deadline, disaster follows disaster. In October, the Great Storm decimates the Forest. Then in February, the Earl dies, locking the estate into probate. Only one man has the profile to draw attention to the campaign and save the forest – Christopher Milne, who is busy running a bookshop in Dorset where he lives with his wife and their daughter Clare, who has cerebral palsy.”

Listen live on 17 October, or afterwards on BBC Sounds.

Productions

Julia Pascal’s new play The Banality of Evil: Hannah Arendt, France 1940, premieres at the Arcola Theatre London, where it will be playing from 5 October until 7 November.

Set in May 1940, the play follows three German Jewish women after they are arrested in France – Hannah Arendt, who would become one of the 20th century’s most influential political theorists; artist Charlotte Salomon; and Communist schoolgirl Eva Daube, a character based on writer and director Julia Pascal’s own relative. Branded “Undesirables”, the three are transported to Camp Gurs, where they face an impossible choice: stay and hope for liberation or risk their lives to escape into a dangerous and unknown future.

Babs Horton‘s comedy In the Lady Garden will be at The Stables Theatre, Hastings on 16 October.

The play sees 69-year-old Alice reflect on her life, as she wonders what life might have been if she hadn’t been expelled from convent school and had sex with Keith from the sausage rolls section. Will Alice shake off the shackles of the patriarchy and live out her days with outrageous abandon? Following sell-out runs and rave reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, In The Lady Garden is one of seven selected Edinburgh National Partnership shows supported by the Pleasance and Theatre Royal Plymouth.

Babs Horton’s new play Queenie & Me is also set to be workshopped at the Theatre Royal Plymouth in October reuniting Babs with fellow Lady Gardeners, director Deborah Edgington and actor Julia Faulkner, joined by actor Jo Loyn playing Queenie, culminating in a work in progress performance at Theatre Royal Plymouth on 23 October. Further details here.

Collected: Live 

This month’s Collected: Live panel events include:

• The Best Advice I Received as a Writer at Exeter Library on Thursday 8 October, from 7pm. Louisa Adjoa Parker, Rebecca Tantony and Matt Bryden will each read a short original piece in response to the theme, followed by a chaired discussion on craft, hindsight, identity and the evolving writer’s voice. Part of a programme of public RLF events across the South West designed to foster engagement with writing and contemporary authors. The event is in partnership with Libraries Unlimited. Tickets here.
• The Writers Who Inspire Me at Lincoln County Assembly Rooms on Friday 23October, from 7pm. Emma Pass, Zoë Marriott and Caroline Cauchiwill share scripts from the RLF Collected sound archive around themes of inspiration and creativity.  The event is in partnership with Lindum Books. Tickets here.

Zoë Howe’s monthly series of Creative Reading and Writing courses inspired by the RLF Collected sound archive also continues at Liverpool Central Library this month. A Place For Us is a series of four monthly workshops in which participants will read and discuss writing about place, as inspiration for their own writing. Begins Tuesday 6 October from 11am. Details here.

Events and appearances 

Ros Schwartz will moderate a translation duel at the Cheltenham Literature Festival between award-winning translators Anam Zafar and Roland Glasser on Tuesday 13 October. No knowledge of French is needed, just a curiosity about language, storytelling and how meaning shifts from one voice to another. 

Tickets and more information here.

Zoë Howe’s show with nature writer and presenter Ajay Tegala, Witching the Wild Year, will be part of the National Trust’s Emmetts Garden Festival on Friday 16 October.

From ancient traditions to seasonal wonders, discover the plants, animals and stories that have helped people find meaning and magic in the world around them. Set against the autumn atmosphere of Emmetts Garden, this special evening talk offers a unique and immersive start to the Autumn Talks weekend of the Emmetts Garden Festival. 

For more details, visit the National Trust website.

Awards

Cherise Saywell has won the 21st BBC National Short Story Award with the University of Cambridge (NSSA) for ‘Ditto’ an “assured” and “beautifully crafted” story set in a small, insular Australian town, about a child’s conflicting loyalties and moment of bravery when violence erupts in his house.

Di Speirs MBE, Chair of the BBC National Short Story Award Judging Panel, said of ‘Ditto’:

“Deeply rooted in one dusk evening and one small town, Saywell’s story writing is assured and true and we are absolutely delighted that ‘Ditto’ is this year’s winner.” 

You can listen to ‘Ditto’, read by Richard Goulding, here.

The all-female shortlist for the BBC National Short Story Award also included Lucy Caldwell and Laura Beatty, meaning a total of 3 out of 5 of the shortlisted writers were RLF Fellows.

You can listen to all the shortlisted stories on the BBC Radio 4 programme page. 

Francis Spufford and Robert Hudson have both been shortlisted for The British Audio Awards 2026, aka the Speakies.

Francis Spufford’s novel Nonesuch has been shortlisted for the Best Audiobook: Fiction award, supported by Lucy’s Book Club, while Robert Hudson‘s script for the comedy podcast James Pond was nominated for Best Podcast (Narrative).

The winners will be announced on Monday 23 November. More details here.

Scotland’s National Book Awards, The Saltires, recently announced their longlist, which includes two RLF writers:

• RLF beneficiary Damian Barr has been longlisted for Fiction Book of the Year for his book The Two Roberts.
• RLF Fellow Catherine Simpson has been longlisted for Non-Fiction Book of the Year with her 2025 memoir Hold Fast: Motherhood, my autistic daughter and me.

The shortlists will be announced in the week beginning 12 October, with the winner set to be announced at an awards ceremony in Edinburgh on 18 November.

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