Advanced Writing Programme 2024-2026 Graduates

Over two years they have been developing their projects through residentials, online courses, workshops, and one-to-one sessions — as part of a cohort of fifteen writers across poetry, fiction and non-fiction, with tutors Caroline Bird, Jacob Ross, and Cal Flyn. As the programme draws to a close, meet the writers and join us in congratulating them on two years of dedication to the craft of writing. We can’t wait to see where it takes them.

POETRY (Caroline Bird) 

Oliver Carmichael Oliver is the recipient of the Michael Donaghy Award and winner of the 2024 Winchester Poetry Prize and 2024 Aurora Prize for Writing. He lives in the North East, where long walks across the moors fuel his work. 

Rebecca Shamash Rebecca’s work has appeared in Stand Magazine, Ink Sweat & Tears, and on the London Underground. Her debut collection explores how we offer and experience care in our lives, shaped by her practice as a psychotherapist. 

Morag Anderson Morag is a dental surgeon working on her debut poetry collection. Her second chapbook And I Will Make of You a Vowel Sound (Fly on the Wall Press, 2024) won the Aryamati Poetry Prize, and her work appears in Mslexia, Butcher’s Dog, and Finished Creatures. 

Rency Raquid Rency’s poems have won the Ware Sonnet Prize and placed in the Café Writers and National Poetry Competitions. His debut collection explores language, transience, and the concept of rot. 

Emma Brown Emma’s work has appeared in aswirl and Sidekick Books, and was longlisted for the Rebecca Swift Foundation’s Woman, Mapped anthology. Her debut collection explores self-imposed solitude through the lens of film and TV, industries she knows from years working behind the scenes. 

FICTION (Jacob Ross) 

Mandy Freeman Mandy writes for reluctant readers. Her YA novel The Accidental Superheroes follows two teenagers fighting an ancient curse armed with nothing but psychic powers and superstrength — and was born from her years as a teacher. 

Fiona Mizani Fiona’s novel-in-progress All That Has Wings is a work of character-driven literary fiction exploring family, control, belonging, and identity. A Devon native, she has lived in Berlin since 2000, where she runs literary projects and translates for the opera. 

Matthew Pegg Matthew is a novelist and playwright currently working on a novel set during an alternative industrial revolution powered by magic. He lives in a small village in Leicestershire with seven cats. 

Harriet Hickey Harriet is working on a love story set across Sheffield’s class divide, where two families’ lives interlock and snap apart under the fault lines of romantic desire and the duty to protect children from harm. 

Mallika Sekhar Mallika is a doctor whose fiction explores displacement and human-animal bonds. She is completing her second novel, alongside non-fiction writing on medical harm and uncertainty. 

NON-FICTION (Cal Flyn) 

Lindsay Johnstone Lindsay is a Glasgow-based writer of narrative non-fiction and fiction, currently working on her first novel and a non-fiction book on premature perimenopause. She writes a global top 100 Substack, won the John Byrne Award in 2023, and is represented by Caro Clarke at Portobello Literary. 

Anushua Biswas Anushua is writing a portrait of Jute — the golden fibre that once linked the fortunes of Dundee and Calcutta. Shaped by her own childhood growing up in the jute mills, her book is an affectionate exploration of love, loss, and post-imperial loyalty.   

Deena Gornick Deena has spent over thirty years as a coach, helping clients understand that confidence is a skill, not a feeling. Her memoir traces how she transformed a painful childhood into a joyful adulthood. 

Tia Bannon Tia is writing a memoir about searching for the father she has never met — who lives just a ten-minute walk away. 

Tom Marshman Tom is a writer and performance artist exploring hidden queer histories through memoir, theatre, and socially engaged work. He is developing Old Wounds, a memoir blending personal memory and archival traces to revisit 1990s Bristol and queer youth through a middle-aged lens.

Learn more about the Advanced Writing Programme here.