The London Library is delighted to announce a new cohort of 40 participants for its flagship Emerging Writers Programme which supports early-career writers. Previous participants include Waterstones’ Book of the Year 2025 winner Lucy Steeds (The Artist), winner of the Forward Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection 2025, Isabelle Baafi (Chaotic Good) and Women’s Prize 2026 longlisted Harriet Rix (The Genius of Trees), alongside many other established writers and poets. The 2026/27 Programme runs from 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027.
This year’s cohort were selected anonymously from a record-breaking field of almost 2700 applicants, by a panel of judges including non-fiction writer Lamorna Ash (Dark Salt Clear, Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever); novelist and former Emerging Writers Programme participant Abi Daré (The Girl With the Louding Voice, And So I Roar); literary agent Elise Dillsworth; playwright, radio dramatist and children’s author Christopher William Hill (Song of the Western Man, Killing Maestros, Osbert the Avenger); poet and poetry editor Sarah Howe (Loop of Jade, Foretokens); and screenwriter and director Sam Leifer (Plebs, Call My Agent).
The Emerging Writers Programme (EWP) is a celebrated London Library initiative, now in its eighth year, and lead by Head of Programmes Claire Berliner. It is free of charge to each participant and geared towards supporting writers with a specific writing project, who have not yet published a full-length work of fiction, non-fiction, collection of poems, or had a full-length work professionally produced for stage/screen.
The 2026/27 programme includes participants whose ages span from 21-60, joining from across the UK to work on a diverse array of projects, in every form and genre. Their writing projects take us all over the world from Scotland to Slovakia to Sri Lanka, Nigeria to the Netherlands, Iran to India. Some are historical, some speculative; they play with folklore and myth, surrealism and realism. There are projects about cults, healers and evangelists, superheroes, sexbots, selkies and the Sycamore Gap. They explore sibling rivalry and parent /child dynamics, violence and care, politics, health, migration, identity, hopes, dreams and memory.
Each EWP participant benefits from an extensive programme of writing development and networking opportunities, peer support, and guidance, and in addition, they are given one year’s free membership of The London Library. Membership to The London Library includes access to its collection of around one million books and periodicals (almost all of which can be borrowed), a vast eLibrary, atmospheric workspaces in a beautiful building, a members’ suite, nationwide postal loans, and discounted tickets to the Library’s popular public events programme. This new group of 40 participants will be following in the footsteps of the many writers, readers and thinkers who have made the Library their home for 185 years.
Of the 40 writers, seven are working on non-fiction and memoir, 16 are writing novels, three of which are for children or young adults, eight are writing for stage/screen, five are poets and four are writing short stories.
The Programme is made possible thanks to the vital support and partnership of donors and funders, including Amazon Literary Partnership, Bloomsbury Publishing, Hawthornden Foundation, The Charlotte Aitken Trust and The International Friends of The London Library. These generous donations enable the participants to take part without a fee.
Meet the 2026/27 Emerging Writers cohort:
Oluwatoni Adegboye blends Yoruba and British folklore to explore the modern Nigerian immigrant experience through the lens of Yoruba mythology. Inspired by Greek mythology and retellings, she is currently working on a Yoruba mythology-inspired children’s book set in London, exploring themes of immigration, integration and cultural negotiation.
Fatima Ali Omar is a director, writer, and TV producer with credits across BBC, Netflix, and Channel 4 on projects spanning race, identity, and history. In theatre, she directs and writes for Side eYe Productions. She is an alumnus of the Soho Theatre Writers Lab (2024) and the Royal Court Introduction to Playwriting Group (2025).
@attackontima
Richard Appleby is a writer based in London but originally from the East of England. He specialises in writing for stage, screen and audio drama and has also worked as a sometime ghostwriter. Richard previously trained at Goldsmiths College and the Royal Court Young Writers Programme.
IG: @richappleby/ BS:@richappleby.bsky.social
Tomás Azocar-Nevin is an actor and writer based in London. He was born in Santiago, Chile, but was raised in Northumberland. As an actor, he has worked across film, TV and theatre. He is currently working on his first solo full-length play about the felling of the Sycamore Gap tree.
IG: @tomazocar
Daniel Barnes is a Stevenage based minister, father of four, runs a busy network of foodbanks and once woke to a second chance after a life-saving heart transplant. His memoir offers a front-row look into the bonkers world of stadium-grade American evangelicalism, providing funny and honest proof that faith can still exist.
Chiara Benn is a ghostwriter and developmental editor. She has written for unicorn founders, partners at the world’s largest VCs and even a Michelin-starred chef. Her projects have been named WHSmith Business Book of the Month and shortlisted for the Financial Times Bracken Prize.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiara-benn-ghostwriter/
Ira Bhattacharjee is an Indian writer pursuing an undergraduate creative writing degree. The London Magazine published her essay on postcolonial adaptations of Hamlet. Her fiction explores female interiority, memory, and moral ambiguity. She is currently writing a Gothic historical novel set in 1940s colonial Bengal, exploring inheritance, patriarchy, and family decline.
IG: ira.bhattacharjee_ /Substack: @dalchinithoughts
Chanse Campbell is interested in characters who are striving to become something more than the lives they've inherited. His work often explores identity, belonging and the gap between who we are and who we hope to be. A graduate of the NFTS Screenwriting MA, he won Channel 4's Writing for TV Awards in 2025.
IG: @chansecampbell
Lauren Collett writes fiction exploring relationships and resilience. Her work has been published in Mslexia, The Stinging Fly and various anthologies of both short and flash fiction. She is currently working on her debut novel.
Instagram: @laurencollettwrites
Arran Davage is a Scottish writer living in Stockport. Currently working on a literary suspense novel about fishermen, families and folklore set in the Highlands, she’s inspired by the working-class folk and wild nature that reared her. Previous work has listed for the Lucy Cavendish and Bath Novel awards.
IG: @ajdavagebooks
Aurelian Razvan Dinu is a Romanian-born, London-based visual artist and writer. A Barbican Life contributor, his work has appeared in Bottle Rocket, BULL, Substack and Medium. His confessional prose explores love, grief, queer and immigrant identity. His work-in-progress is a non-fiction book about surviving domestic abuse, parental loss and recovery.
IG: @razdinu
Emily Donoghue is an Essex-based writer, currently completing a UEA Creative Writing MA. She is particularly interested in hauntings (internal and external) and has written several short plays. She is working on a novel exploring the legacies of grief and how writing might structure what is, ultimately, a structureless experience.
IG: @em.ilydonoghue
Amaal Fawzi is half-Iraqi, half-British, was born in Egypt and raised in Lebanon. She studied literature and creative writing at university and spent some time in Jordan studying Arabic. Her writing tends to be multi-disciplinary and she uses magical realism to express the surrealism of normal life.
Johanna Gibson is a writer from the Virgin Islands whose work explores migration, memory, grief and Caribbean mythos. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, published in several journals and she has performed poetry alongside the London Philharmonic Orchestra. She is working on a novel and her first collection of poetry.
IG: @johanna.niesha
Emma Goddard is an American writer based in London. She is a contributor to The Beasts Beneath the Winds, a middle grade anthology which was published by Amulet Books/Abrams.
IG: @emmalgoddard
Jack Goulder is a science writer and doctor working in psychiatry. His work has appeared in The Guardian, BBC Science Focus and The Fence, and won the ABSW award for best article by a scientist. He is working on his first book about the history of psychosis.
X: @jack_goulder
Connor Harrison is writer based in London. His writing has been published by The London Magazine, The Toe Rag, Poetry Wales and The Cleveland Review of Books, among others. He is working on his first novel, All the Presleys of Our Land.
IG: @connorharrison254 /X: @HarrysunSee
Tabitha Hayward is a writer of poems and plays. Her poems have been longlisted for the National Poetry Competition and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and Live Canon. Her plays have been performed in London and the South West, and listed for competitions including the Bruntwood Prize and Theatre503 International Award.
Tippy Jackson is a Memphis-born writer based in London. She has a background in literature, philosophy, and health policy, and works in health-tech. She is writing a memoir rooted in Southern family history, drawing on archived documents, personal memory and the landscape of a city shaped by endurance.
Oliver Kingston is a Welsh writer and actor. As he comes to the end of a Writing for Performance MSt at the University of Cambridge, he is developing a portfolio of film and television screenplays. Drawn to genre films, his work explores how horror can articulate the queer lived experience.
@ollie_mk
Petra Lindner is a Slovak-born writer based in London and works in film industry research. Her fiction has been published by Fresher Press, Reflex Fiction and others. She’s studying novel-writing with Curtis Brown Creative. Her novel-in-progress is set between the UK and Slovakia, interrogating brain drain, estrangement and filial duty.
IG: @petralindner
Joseph RA Lindsay is a South London screen and stage writer, NFTS graduate and lifelong world-builder. His work either constructs intricate new realities or dismantles existing ones – yet all are anchored and driven by one unspoken question buried at its heart.
IG: Josephralindsay
S A MacLeod's poetry has appeared in Poetry Bus, The Pomegranate London, Present Tense Zine, Dreich, Passionfruit Review, Keep Yer Heid and Groving, and is forthcoming in a Fran Lock-edited anthology. Originally from the north of Scotland, she spent seven years in Japan and now lives in South East London.
Kitya Mark is an interdisciplinary writer living in London. In 2023 she published her zine, the pride flag above the prison. She is an alum of the Barbican Young Poets programme and an editor at Failed Architecture magazine.
@kityamark
Winnie Marshall Griffiths is a Yorkshire born student and creative writer, currently completing her English BA at Sussex University. Now based in Brighton, she is working on a short story collection about climate, women, and selkies.
IG: @winnie_grace__
Dr Julia Martins is a public historian specialising in the history of gender and medicine. Her YouTube channel and blog, Living History by Dr Julia Martins, bring historical research to a wider audience. She also hosts a feminist book club, My Body, My Book Club, raising funds for charity.
YouTube: @juliamartinshistory / IG: @juliamartinshistory and @mybodymybookclub
TikTok: @juliamartinshistory / Juliamartins.co.uk / Mybodymybookclub.com
Lily McDermott is a Yorkshire-based screenwriter and poet. In 2026, she co-founded Brisk Productions, a television production company championing character-driven, Northern stories. Her work has appeared in Magma, Poetry London and The Poetry Review. She was a 2022 T S Eliot Prize Young Critic and studied English Literature at Oxford University.
X: lilymcdwrites
Maryam Namazie is an Iranian-born writer, broadcaster and award-winning rights campaigner. For over four decades, she has worked on refugee rights, women’s rights, secularism and freedom of expression. Her writing draws on histories of exile, resistance and survival shaped by family experience, migration and political struggle.
@maryamnamazie
Mofiyinfoluwa O is a Nigerian writer whose work is concerned with the interior of African|Black womanhood. She is a graduate of the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program and The Founder of The Abebi AfroNonfiction Foundation. She is working on a memoir interrogating desire and its relationship with the body, soul and spirit.
IG: @mofiyinfoluwa_o
Maya Owen is an anti-disciplinary artist and activist based between London and Essex. If you meet her at a party, she will tell you she is Mad, gay, and once broke into the British Museum inside a wooden horse.
@mayaceliaowen (Instagram)
Guy Pewsey is a primary school teacher living in London whose fiction is primarily geared toward children. Originally from Wales, he was previously a journalist: his work has appeared in The Times, The Independent, The Evening Standard and Grazia. His novel-in-progress is a middle-grade comedy about sibling rivalry and magic.
@guypewsey
Angélica Pina Lèbre is working on two short story collections (or it might be a novel in fragments) and a translation project. Her work has been published in literary magazines and an anthology with some stories nominated or shortlisted for prizes. Angélica thoroughly enjoys reading out loud.
Alicia Rix is a critic in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature. She has written on the deep sea, charm, bullfighting and transport and has recently published a monograph on Henry James with Cambridge University Press. She is currently writing a novel about violins and the afterlife.
@alicia.rix
Barbara Speed is an editor on the Guardian’s opinion section and a nonfiction writer focusing on cults and fringe groups in Britain.
IG: @barbara.speed1 / Substack: @barbaraspeed1 / BS: @barbaraspeed.bsky.social
Alison Clara Tan is a Southeast Asian writer in London. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in fourteen poems, wildness, The Kenyon Review and Gutter Magazine, among others. She is a Barbican Young Poet, a Brooklyn Poets Fellow and has been a resident artist at the Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking.
IG: @raspberrypancakes
Amy Tattersall White was born and raised in a working-class Portsmouth family and studied English at Exeter University, when she also put on her first play at the Edinburgh Fringe. Having recently received a Master’s in Screenwriting from the National Film and Television School, she has written award-winning work across screen and stage.
@amtattersall
Susie Thornberry is a writer and artistic director whose uncanny fiction explores the parallel shadows of girlhood, womanhood, and otherhood. She received a London Writers Award, was shortlisted for the Wasafiri New Writing Prize, is a fellow of the International Literature Exchange and the Director of arts organisation, Metal.
Kate Vine is a writer based in York. Her fiction explores contemporary women’s experience and artistic expression. She has an MA in Creative Writing from UEA and her short fiction is published by Linen Press and Lunate among others. She is developing her first novel and is represented by Johnson & Alcock.
@katevvx – Instagram
Nayela Wickramasuriya is a Sri Lankan-British writer. Her fiction explores power, desire and postcolonial legacy as it relates to home and migration. She has been shortlisted and longlisted for the Brick Lane Bookshop and Mogford short story prizes, and holds an MA in Creative Writing (Distinction) from UEA.
@52__books
Ben Acton Williams writes literary fiction. He is working on a debut novel exploring grief, technology, and the boundaries between the human and the digital. He lives in Bristol with his husband.
IG: @benreadsgood
