Forthwrite Festival: a celebration of women writers over 50
Forthwrite Festival is back in 2026!
Brighton: Saturday, 7 March
Crawley: Sunday, 14 March
Back for its second year New Writing South are thrilled to present Forthwrite Festival of Women’s Writing; a celebration of women writers over 50.
Expect a packed programme taking place over two days in Brighton and Crawley, including talks from award-winning authors, poets and industry professionals, the chance to participate in hands-on workshops, and join engaging conversations.
This event is for writers and readers of all genders and ages. Tickets are on sale now — don’t miss your chance to be part of this vibrant event.
The Festival is run by Forthwrite in partnership with New Writing South and is supported by Arts Council England.
Forthwrite launched 2025.
Introducing our writers (and agents) for 2026
Joining us in Brighton on Saturday, 7 March:
Shona Abhyankar has been a book publicist for almost 30 years. She has worked internationally as a bookseller and literary agent and is currently Head of PR for Penguin Random House. She has experience agency-side as well as in-house, and is a founder member of the Primadonna Festival. Shona works on both fiction and non-fiction and recent campaigns include The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, Dianarama by Andy Webb and The Christmas Tree That Loved to Dance by Miranda Hart. Books she is excited about for 2026 include California Gold by Jodie Chapman and Medal Man by Mark Smith. Shona is a qualified psychotherapist which can be very useful as a book publicist.
Co-Facilitator: A Writer’s PR Toolkit
Diana Anyakwo grew up in Lagos, Nigeria. She is of mixed Irish and Nigerian heritage. She moved to the UK when she was a teenager and later graduated from the University of Manchester with a degree in Molecular Biology and a Masters in Bioreactor Systems. Her debut young adult novel My Life as a Chameleon won the Children’s Africana Book Award 2025 from Howard University in the US, was a finalist for the 2024 KPMG Children’s Books Ireland Awards and the Diverse Book Awards and longlisted for the 2024 Jhalak Children’s and YA prize. Her writing has appeared in The Telegraph and Black Ballad magazine. She currently lives and works in Manchester as a freelance writer and editor of English Language teaching materials.
Panelist: Writing from Experience
Uju Asika is a multi-award nominated blogger, author, speaker and creative writing mentor (ujuasika.com/writers). She is the founder of the Top 10 UK family blog Babes About Town and the author of 3 books including her acclaimed debut, Bringing Up Race, hailed as ‘timely and important’ (Evening Standard Best Books 2020). A former journalist, Uju has also been a screenwriter for some of Nigeria’s spiciest TV dramas. Her work has featured widely in the media e.g. BBC London, Woman’s Hour, Good Morning Sunday, Good Housekeeping, Marie Claire and The Observer. In 2025, she was Judging Chair for the Children’s Wainwright Prize for Fiction. Uju lives in north London with her family and enjoys bingeing Netflix dramas, practising tsundoku, and dancing in her kitchen. Follow Uju @babesabouttown across social media or visit her author website at ujuasika.com.
Panelist: Writing from Experience
Holly Dawson is a writer, editor and creative writing tutor. Her first book, All Of Us Atoms, was published by Canongate in 2025, shaking up the genre of memoir by using multiple points of view and fusing truth with imagination. Since 2018, she has been Reader-in-Residence at Charleston, where she runs the popular Life Writing programme and other workshops and events. Her plays, bringing to life figures such as Virginia Woolf and F Scott Fitzgerald entirely in their own words, have been performed by actors including Helena Bonham Carter, James Norton, Miranda Richardson and Jonathan Pryce. She has written for The Guardian, The Observer and the BBC, and is also a tutor with the Creative Writing Programme. Having grown up in Cornwall, she now lives in rural Sussex with a cross-eyed husky and far too many hens. www.hollyjdawson.com
Panelist: Writing from Experience
Suhayla El-Bushra is a screenwriter and playwright. Her first feature film, BRIDES (BFI/Neon Films) was on general release last year, and her stage adaptation of Roald Dahl’s THE ENORMOUS CROCODILE is currently touring the UK and US. For TV she was lead writer and executive producer on Ackley Bridge (C4/The Forge) and a core writer on Becoming Elizabeth and Hollyoaks. Previous theatre work includes THE LONG SONG (Chichester Festival Theatre), NW TRILOGY (Kiln Theatre) and THE SUICIDE (National Theatre). She is currently working with Neon Films, Element Pictures, Kindle Productions and Avalon Productions on various film and TV projects.
Suhayla El-Bushra’s film BRIDES screening plus Q&A
Nicola Gill lives in London. At the age of five, when all of the other little girls wanted to be ballet dancers, she decided she wanted to be an author. Her ballet teacher was very relieved.
When she’s not at her desk, you can usually find Nicola reading, cooking up vast vats of food for friends and family or watching box sets. Occasionally she even leaves the house…
Co-Facilitator: Festival Book Group
Lisa Highton was a publishing director with Doubleday/HarperCollins and Hachette for many years before becoming an agent in 2022 with Jenny Brown Associates which started the JBA Debut Novel Over 50 Prize in 2023 for unrepresented writers. The prize has run twice now and has had entries from over 2000 writers, the first winner was Glennis Virgo with her historical novel CITY OF SILK (Allison & Busby 2024). The 2025 winner was Juliet Thomas with her crime novel, 31 MILTON ROAD.
Panelist: Post 50 Success: Making it Happen
Marcia Hutchinson was born to Windrush generation Jamaican parents in the UK in 1962. She was the first pupil from her school to go to Oxford, where she gained an MA in Law. She worked as a lawyer before founding the educational publishing company Primary Colours. She was awarded an MBE in 2011 for services to Cultural Diversity. Moving to Manchester in 2012, she became a community activist, and was elected as a Labour Councillor in 2021. She is now a full-time writer. She is the co-author with Kate Griffin (under the pseudonym Lila Cain) of the historical fiction novel The Blackbirds of St Giles, which was published in 2025.
The Mercy Step is her debut as a solo writer. Her next two novels are with her agent. She has two others in the works. When she is not writing Marcia teaches Zumba, yoga and spin, with a dedicated following at gyms around Manchester.
Panelist: Post 50 Success: Making it Happen
Kavita A. Jindal is an award-winning author who writes across genres. She explores traditional and contemporary cultures, transversing societies and political borders.
Her novel Manual For A Decent Life won the Eastern Eye Award for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Rabindranath Tagore Prize. Her poetry publications include Raincheck Accepted, Raincheck Renewed and Patina. Her short story collection The Planet Spins On Its Axis, Regardless, is a finalist for the Eyelands Prize. Reviewers have said of the novel “the book’s boldness, beauty and courage are utterly seductive.”
Kavita previously served as Senior Editor at Asia Literary Review. She has taught writing workshops and has been invited to literary festivals around the world. She enjoys collaborating with other writers and artists across a range of projects and is the co-founder of The Whole Kahani collective. www.kavitajindal.com
Facilitator: Nice No More
Beth Miller is the author of seven novels, including the bestselling The Missing Letters of Mrs Bright. She has also published two non-fiction books about Shakespeare and The Archers. She is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Brighton University, a tutor on the MA in Creative Writing and Publishing at West Dean College, and she regularly teaches at Arvon. She is a book coach for writers at all stages.
In conversation with Suhayla El-Bushra at the screening of BRIDES
Priscilla Morris is a British author of Bosnian-Cornish parentage. Her debut novel Black Butterflies is about an artist’s experience of the Siege of Sarajevo and was inspired by maternal family history. It was shortlisted in 2023 for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the RSL Ondaatje Prize, the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award, the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize and the Nota Bene Prize. It was Fiction Runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize 2025. Priscilla holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and teaches creative writing online. Read more at priscillamorris.org.
Facilitator: On Place
Frances Quinn is the author of historical novels The Smallest Man, That Bonesetter Woman, The Lost Passenger and The Scandalous Ladies Football Club (out July 2 2026). She grew up in Forest Gate, East London and studied English at King’s College, Cambridge, then became a journalist and copywriter, before having her first novel published at the age of 58. She lives in Hove with her husband and three very spoilt Tonkinese cats.
Co-Facilitator: Festival Book Group
Ivy Ngeow was born and raised in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. While completing her MA in Writing, she won the 2005 Middlesex University Literary Press Prize out of almost 1500 entrants. The American Boyfriend, published by Penguin Random House Southeast Asia in 2023, was longlisted for the Avon x Mushens Entertainment Prize for Commercial Fiction Writers of Colour 2022 and the winner of the Singapore Book Awards 2024 for Best Marketing Campaign. Her debut, Cry of the Flying Rhino (2017), was awarded the International Proverse Prize in Hong Kong. Her novels include Heart of Glass (2018), Overboard (2020) and White Crane Strikes (2022). She is the commissioning editor of the Asian Anthology New Writing series. Her latest novel, In Safe Hands, was shortlisted for the Joffe Books Prize. She lives in London.
Panelist: Post 50 Success: Making it Happen
Truda Spruyt has been working in the creative and cultural sector for over 30 years, and set up Collective Wisdom, a new kind of PR and marketing agency for publishing and the arts, in 2024. She specialises in devising and delivering integrated communications strategies and leading teams for complex projects. With broad and deep contacts amongst writers, publishers and media across the sector, she loves to make fruitful connections for clients. Campaigns have included launching the Library of Birmingham and developing the prestige of prizes including the International Booker Prize and the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. She is a Secretary of the Book Society, an Ambassador of the Blake Cottage Trust and on the Arts Board of the Royal Society of Arts. Current clients include Fourth Estate, Whitefox, Stratford Literary Festival and the Portico Library in Manchester.
Co-Facilitator: A Writer’s PR Toolkit
Kathleen Whyman is a bestselling humorous women’s fiction author. She writes for all the multi-tasking, mentally-overloaded women, who put themselves on the subs bench for the sake of their family, then realise they don’t have it all – they do it all!
Kathleen’s books, one of which was shortlisted for the Comedy Women in Print prize, are inspired by her own struggle to juggle a career with children, housework, life admin and never-ending laundry. She admits that the laundry’s winning.
As well as writing, Kathleen is a panel host for writing festivals and interviews authors at events, as co-host of YouTube Author Talks, and for publications. She also teaches Writing With Humour workshops.
Kathleen lives in Hertfordshire with her husband and two teenage daughters. There’s a lot of door slamming.
Panelist: Post 50 Success: Making it Happen
Joining us in Crawley on Saturday, 14 March:
Sharon Duggal writes novels and short stories. Her second novel, Should We Fall Behind (2020, Bluemoose Books) was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s 2021 Encore Award, selected for Between the Covers, BBC television’s flagship book show and chosen as a Prima Magazine Book of the Year. Her debut, The Handsworth Times was The Morning Star’s Fiction Book of the Year 2016 and selected as the Brighton City Reads Big Read in 2017. Her short fiction appears in anthologies including The Book of Birmingham, Visual Verse, and Love Bites: Fiction Inspired by Pete Shelley and Buzzcocks. Sharon’s third novel, Light Across the Plains will be published in September 2026. She is currently working on a fourth book.
Sharon has an MPhil, Creative Writing (University of Sussex) and teaches for organisations including the Arvon Foundation, Jericho Writers, New Writing South, New Writing North, Spread the Word and others. She is a Royal Literary Fund (RLF) Fellow, and Subject Leader – Creative Writing at West Dean College of Arts and Conservation. She is also one half of the Ruben and Sharon Show, the UK’s only regular radio show with a mum and son presenter team, playing out on Radio Reverb.
Panelist: Finding Our Voice
Yvvette Edwards is a British writer of Montserratian origin and author of A Cupboard Full of Coats and The Mother. She has written a variety of short stories which have been broadcast on radio and published in anthologies, including New Daughters of Africa. Her work has been nominated for a number of literary awards including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Booker Prize. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her third novel, Good Good Loving, will be published by Virago in March 2026.
Panelist: Finding Our Voice
Dulani Kulasinghe (she/her) is a writer and teacher whose creative practice explores landscape, belonging and legacies of empire. She has run creative workshops for young people and adults across Sussex. Dulani’s work has been published by Writing Our Legacy and Renard Press, and also forms part of several site-responsive installations including Witness Stand: The Chattri for Brighton Festival 2022 and Letters Home as part of We Hear You Now, a spoken word audio trail along the English Coastal Path in South Downs National Park. Her work is supported by Arts Council England and Brighton Dome. Dulani is a Fellow of New Writing South and lives with her partner and two daughters in Brighton.
Facilitator: Introduction to Life Writing
Hannah Lowe is a poet, memoirist and academic. Her latest book, The Kids, won the Costa Poetry Award and the Costa Book of the Year, 2021. Her first poetry collection Chick (Bloodaxe, 2013) won the Michael Murphy Memorial Award for Best First Collection. She is a Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University. Her memoir, The Woman in the Chinese Collar is due in early 2027.
Saima Mir has written for The Times, The Guardian and the Independent. Her debut novel The Khan, was a Times Bestseller, a Guardian best crime and thriller and a Waterstones Thriller of the month. Her essay for It’s Not About The Burqa (Picador) appeared in Guardian Weekend and received over 250,000 hits online in two days. She contributed to the anthology The Best, Most Awful Job: Twenty Writers Talk Honestly About Motherhood. Saima grew up in Bradford, where she worked as a rookie crime reporter and now lives in London. Vengeance is her second novel.
Panelist: Finding Our Voice
Akila M Richards is an award-winning fiction writer, poet and spoken word artist. Her recent poetry pamphlet ‘Ritual For A Mango’ was launched in February 2024 at Goldsmith University. Her work led to collaborations in Liberia, The Gambia, St Lucia, Berlin and UK. A year long residency at Brighton Dome led to the development of The Rest Experience. Akila’s portfolio includes coaching and mentoring as well as facilitating creative projects. She is currently writing a novel. https://akilarichards.wordpress.com/
Facilitator: The Rest Experience
Monique Roffey, FRSL, is an award-winning Trinidadian born British writer of novels, essays, literary journalism and a memoir. Her latest novel, Passiontide, was published in June 2024. The Mermaid of Black Conch, won the Costa Book of the Year Award, 2020, and was nominated for eight other awards. Her other Caribbean novels, The White Woman on the Green Bicycle and House of Ashes have also been nominated for awards. Archipelago won the OCM Bocas Award for Caribbean Literature in 2013. Her work has been translated into many languages and adapted for screen. She is a co-founder of Writers Rebel within Extinction Rebellion and a member of the Hard Art collective. She is also a Professor of Contemporary Fiction and a member of the Centre for Fiction at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Monique Roffey in Conversation with Hannah Lowe
Facilitator: Thinking Like a Mountain
Pam Williams enjoyed a fashion career until her late forties, working as a fashion journalist, magazine fashion editor (on She, PS, Shape and Now) and as a freelance stylist. She has since worked as a foster carer and a teaching assistant, now having retrained as a teacher in 2017, Pam leads the Post 16 provision at a special school.
Creative writing was always a passion and when Maya Angelou died in 2014 Pam adopted her heroine’s mantra ‘dare to try’. In 2019 she won a place on the writer’s development programme the London Writers Award.
In March 2024 Pam’s debut novel A Trace of Sun was released and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.
Panelist: Finding Our Voice
