Authors
In 2015, Okechukwu Nzelu won a Northern Writers’ Award from New Writing North. His debut novel, The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney (Dialogue Books, 2019), won a Betty Trask Award; it was also shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Polari First Book Prize, and longlisted for the Portico Prize. In 2021, it was selected for the Kingston University Big Read and distributed to all staff and students at three universities.
His second novel, Here Again Now (Dialogue Books, 2022) was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Encore Award, the Polari Prize, the Jhalak Prize, and the Diverse Book Awards. He has made several appearances on national radio, and is a regular contributor to Kinfolk magazine. He is a non-executive director of ALCS and CLA, and Lecturer in Creative Writing at Lancaster University.
In 2024 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Represented By Cara Lee Simpson
Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin was the winner of the inaugural PFD Queer Fiction Prize in 2022 and was also shortlisted for the Women’s Prize Trust Discoveries Prize. Her début literary novel, Ordinary Saints, about a young woman who learns that her dead brother is being made into a Catholic saint will be published in 2025 by Manilla Press.
Represented by Cara Lee Simpson
Kira McPherson is originally from Western Australian and has lived in London since 2013, where she works in politics and research for film and TV. Her short stories have been published in Westerly and the Stockholm Review of Literature.
She was a recipient of a 2018 London Writers Award, highly commended in the 2018 Spread the Word London Short Story Prize, shortlisted for the 2017 London Magazine Essay Competition and longlisted for the 2017 Exeter Writers Short Story Competition. Her debut novel, Higher Education, was published by Ultimo Press.
Represented by Cara Lee Simpson
Kiprop Kimutai is a Kenyan writer whose fiction has appeared in The Evergreen Review, The Johannesburg Review of Books, Kwani? Trust, Jalada Africa, Painted Bride Quarterly and No Tokens. He was a 2019 Maison Baldwin fellow and his works have been shortlisted for the Gerald Kraak Award and the Miles Morland Scholarship.
He currently working on his début novel, The Freedom of Birds, which won the 2023 Graywolf Press African Fiction Prize and will be published in 2025, as well as a collection of stories themed around desire and alienation.
Represented by Cara Lee Simpson
C.R. Howell is a writer and doctoral researcher at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-Upon-Avon, completing a PhD on women’s lament in the poetic tradition. She writes realist literary psychological fiction about women’s lives, exploring themes such as motherhood, sexual violence, alienation and trauma. Her first novel, The Woman in my Home was published by Joffe Books in 2024. She lives in rural North Wales with her partner, three children and three dogs.
Represented by Cara Lee Simpson
Roxy’s debut novel, As Young as This (published by Fig Tree, Penguin) was sold at auction and was a Best Book of 2024 in The Independent, Harper’s Bazaar, Stylist, Cosmopolitan, and Sunday Times Style. She is also a screenwriter and alumni of the BBC Comedy Room. Her scripts have been optioned by several production companies and her pilot Useless Millennials was commissioned and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Wants and Needs (also published by Fig Tree, Penguin) is her second novel.
Represented by Cara Lee Simpson.
Abi Canepa-Anson is a psychotherapist, writer and activist keen to make psychotherapy more accessible to those who need it. She has a particular interest in raising awareness about the stigma around mental health and the effects of racism on black lives.
She is a qualified psychodynamic psychotherapist, having undertaken her clinical training with the Westminster Pastoral Foundation (WPF). She also has a Masters in the Psychodynamics of Human Development from Birkbeck University and a postgraduate diploma in Psychodynamic Theory and Practice from Roehampton University. She trained at the Relate Institute in Relationships Counselling, in Psychosexual Therapy at the Tavistock Institute, and at the Institute of Group Analysis as a qualified as a supervisor.
Abi has worked in a psychiatric hospital, with a disordered eating unit, as well as in higher education. She now works in private practice offering individual and couple therapy, group work and supervision. She has vast experience working with complex personality types and common conditions such as depression, anxiety and stress related issues, bereavement and loss, adoption, relationships, identity and belonging.
In addition to offering therapy and supervision, she has led workshops and taught on postgraduate courses on difference, diversity and inclusion. She is currently working on her first non-fiction book, in a yet to be announced publishing deal.
Represented by Cara Lee Simpson
Shannon Garvey has a MFA in Fiction from the University of New Hampshire, where she taught undergraduate classes. Shorter work which inspired this novel have been published by The Saturday Evening Post. Shannon researched this novel during the many years waiting tables in tourist towns and working on Block Island.
Represented by Stephanie Cabot.
Sophie Demange was born in 1983, in Rouen. After studying literature, a year-long trip to India, and many years in Mexico, she returned to France where she has worked with humanitarian associations tending to homeless people, sex workers, and unaccompanied minors. She is currently involved in the protection of children with disabilities. The Lady Butchers is her first novel.
Dr. Philippe Boxho is an expert in forensic pathology—but he is also a brilliant storyteller with a wry sense of humour. His reflections on death, and what they reveal about life, are what give his books such universal appeal. For more than 30 years, Dr. Philippe Boxho has been making the dead talk. His best-sellers bring us into crime scenes where bodies disappear, murders are covered up, suicides conceal surpises, and the dead are often not as dead as we think.
Boxho’s books have sold over one million copies in French alone.