BeaconLit 2026

DAVE SIVERS grew up in West London and has been writing all his life, including columns and articles in newspapers and magazines, as well as short stories in Take a Break magazine and other publications. 

His books include the popular crime fiction series featuring the Aylesbury Vale detectives, DI Lizzie Archer and DS Dan Baines. His latest novel, Price to Pay is the seventh in the series and his twelfth published title. His DI Nathan Quarrel books are set in Hertfordshire. 

Dave lives in Buckinghamshire with his wife, Chris, and is a founder of the annual BeaconLit festival of books and writing.

He will be leading the introductory New Voices panel from 9.35am-10.25am.

Website:

 https://www.davesivers.co.uk/

AMMAN BRAR is a writer and theatre maker. He has an MA in Creative Writing from UEA. He was one of the inaugural winners of the BBC Writersroom 10 Award for his play Punjabi Boy with Tamasha Theatre Co where he was also Artist in Residence. 

Amman’s father was a sub-postmaster during the 1980s and 1990s, and as soon as he was able, Amman was ‘encouraged’ to work in the shop after school and at weekends. He saw how respected his father was and how the locals loved having a post office as a hub for the community. 

Mr Sidhu’s Post Office is Amman’s debut novel and pays tribute to his father and the community he served for decades, while also honouring the struggle of the victims of the Horizon scandal. 

Amman will be speaking at the 9.35am-10.25am New Voices panel. 

Website: https://ammanpaulsinghbrar.com/about/

 MADELEINE DUNNIGAN is a writer from and based in London. She was the Jill Davis Fellow on the New York University Fiction MFA (2022–24). Jean is her debut novel, published by Daunt Books (UK) and W.W. Norton (US) this year.

She is currently at work on her debut feature film, commissioned by Film 4 

She will be speaking in the 9.35am-10.25am New Voices panel. 

Website: https://www.madeleinedunnigan.com/

 NATALIE GREGORY, like her protagonist in her debut novel, Mother, Ghost, Mango Seed, had a Thai mother. It was the accidental disposal of Natalie’s mother’s recipes, shortly after her mother passed away, which eventually inspired the novel’s inciting incident. 

With a BA in English and History and an MSc in International Politics, Natalie has made a career out of writing for others, including as a speechwriter, but her passion has always been fiction. Her short story, A Bowl of Soup, was published in Together in the UK’s anthology, Hear our Stories by Victorina Press in August 2023. This story also won the Creative Writing NZ flash fiction competition and was shortlisted for the Exeter Short Story Prize. Natalie lives in Buckinghamshire. 

She will be partaking in the 9.35am-10.25am New Voices panel.

Instagram: @nataliegregory_writes

 ADINA CAMPBELL is a UK correspondent for BBC News whose brief includes delivering stories on criminal justice, policing and equality. 

Adina was previously the BBC’s community affairs correspondent and, before working in network news, she used to report and present on BBC South Today covering stories in Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and surrounding areas. 

Adina is a fitness enthusiast and a mum of two boys.

She joins us from 10.45am-11.35am in an interview with the festival's first headliner, Sue Moorcroft. 

Twitter:

@adinacampbell

SUE MOORCROFT is a Sunday Times bestselling author. Her novels have reached #1 on Kindle UK and Top 100 on Kindle US, Canada, Germany and Italy. She’s won the Goldsboro Books Contemporary Novel of the Year, Readers’ Best Romantic Novel award, two HOLT Medallions and the Katie Fforde Bursary. 

She’s the president of the Romantic Novelists’ Association. Her novels, short stories, serials, columns, writing ‘how to’ and courses have appeared around the world.

As a headliner, Sue will discuss her latest work from 10.45am-11.35am, with a 10-minute Q&A included.

Website:

suemoorcroft.com

ZOE BROOKS is a writer and performer of poetry from Gloucestershire, where she is a director of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. As a young poet Zoe learned how to perform poetry as part of Michael Horovitz's New Departures/Poetry Olympics. Her long poem for multiple voices Fool's Paradise won the EPIC award for best poetry ebook.

Zoe’s latest collection Something In Nothing weaves together the lives of various fairytale characters in a contemporary setting to explore universal issues. At the heart of the sequence is the story of the serial killer Bluebeard and the Luminous Girl. Other characters include the elderly couple Beauty and Beast, the Slavic witch and ex-goddess Baba Yaga, a non-magical Godmother and a useless angel.  

She will be in the 11.55am-12.45pm Poetry Circle. 

Website:  https://www.zoebrookspoet.co.uk 

KARAN CHAMBERS is a poet, tutor, and former English teacher. She studied English Literature and Creative Writing at UEA and is currently in her final year of an MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway. 

She has poems in Poetry London, The London Magazine, The Rialto, and The Stinging Fly. Karan is the winner of the 2025 Katrina Collins Poetry Prize and was Highly Commended in the 2023 Cheltenham Poetry Competition.

Her pamphlet woman | folk is available now from Salò Press and her second pamphlet is forthcoming with Atomic Bohemian in June 2026. She lives in Surrey with her husband and three lively children.

Karan will be in the 11.55am-12.45pm Poetry Circle. 

Website:

www.KaranChambers.com

Instagram:

@KaranChambersPoetry

Bluesky: 

@KaranChambers.bsky.social

EP JENKINS is a poet and teacher living in Kent. She is currently in the first year of a PhD in English at Royal Holloway. Her teaching work and research aims to aid those who have experienced displacement, particularly refugees and victims of human trafficking. 

Her collection Rituals (2022) was published by Broken Sleep Books, and she has co-edited two anthologies, Harpies (2018) and Rewilding: An Ecopoetic Anthology (2022). Her work has also been featured with Osmosis Press, ArtBLAB, and Streetcake Magazine. Recently, she worked with two Kent based arts and culture initiatives which explored her interest in ecology, history, and collective art making, Wild About Whitstable Festival, and Jullieberries Grave: A Year of Celebration, the latter of which generated work which was exhibited as part of the Living Library at Landmark Arts Centre. 

EP is interested in shared history, ritualised writing, and accessible poetics. 

She forms part of the 11.55am-12.45pm Poetry Circle, running simultaneously with the writing workshop. 

Instagram: 

@Ep.jenkins.poetry 

PIPPA BRUSH CHAPPELL is a writer, editor and writing coach whose short fiction and poetry have been published in literary magazines and online. Her novel was shortlisted for the Novel London 2020 award and a poem set in 16th-century Lisbon was shortlisted for the 2025 Pushcart Prize.

Pippa is a content editor and tutor for The History Quill. She has a PhD in Canadian Literature and has taught at colleges and universities in Canada and the USA, as well as secondary school in the UK. She also runs The Reading Room – a guided reading group which aims to explore different and challenging works every month.

She leads the 11.55am-12.45pm Writing Workshop in the upstairs of Marsworth Hall. 

Website:

pippabc.com

ERIN KELLY is the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Poison Tree, The Sick Rose, The Burning Air, The Ties That Bind, He Said/She Said, Stone Mothers/We Know You Know, Watch Her Fall, The Skeleton Key and The House of Mirrors, as well as Broadchurch: The Novel, inspired by the award-winning TV series.

The Poison Tree became a major ITV drama and was a Richard & Judy Summer Read. He Said/She Said spent six weeks in the top ten in both hardback and paperback, was longlisted for the Theakston's Old Peculier crime novel of the year award and selected for both the Simon Mayo Radio 2 and Richard & Judy Book Clubs. The Skeleton Key was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller and was selected as a Waterstones Thriller of the Month. 

Born in London in 1976, Erin lives in north London with her husband and daughters. As a headliner, Erin Kelly will be in conversation with Dave Sivers. 

Website: https://www.erinkelly.co.uk/copy-of-home

 JOANNA MILLER was raised in Cambridge and studied English at Exeter College, Oxford. 

After a decade working in education, she set up an award-winning poetry gift business. She has recently graduated from Oxford again, with a diploma in creative writing. She lives with her husband and three children in Hertfordshire. 

The Eights, Joanna’s first novel, tells the story of the first women to study alongside men at Oxford. Described by The Times as ‘sparkling’ and ‘inspiring’, it was shortlisted for the East Anglian Book Awards and longlisted for the HWA’s Debut Crown. 

The Eights has been published in over twenty countries to date and was recently selected for the Queen’s Reading Room.

Joanna will be hosting the new 2.50pm-3.40pm Genre? What Genre? panel.

Website: 

https://www.joannamillerauthor.com/

ILONA BANNISTER is a New Yorker who has lived in the UK for many years with her husband and sons. She is a dual-qualified US lawyer and UK solicitor and practised immigration law in the UK before she started writing fiction. 

Her family’s history of migration to the US, her experience as an American mother raising children in the UK, and her work as a lawyer have led her to write stories about otherness, belonging, and what it means to be on the outside of a place looking in.

Her first book When I Ran Away was longlisted for the First Novel Prize in 2021.

Ilona is speaking in the 2.50pm-3.40pm  Genre? What Genre? session. 

Website: 

 www.ilonabannisterwrites.co

STEPHANIE BRAMWELL-LAWES grew up in the historic city of Bath and studied

History and Ancient History at Exeter University.

A lifelong love of literature led to a career in publishing in 2009, and her passion for books has only continued to grow ever since. Her favourite novels include Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, and anything by Tracy Chevalier. 

She currently lives in a restored asylum in Warwickshire with her husband and a small feline dictator named Ruby. Thornby Manor is her debut novel.

Stephanie will be part of the 2.50pm-3.40pm Genre? What Genre? discussion.

X and Instagram: 

@BramwellLawes

HEIDI EDMUNDSON was born by the sea and grew up surrounded by the legends of Northern Ireland’s spectacular Causeway Coast. She was an avid reader of mystery stories, and dreamed of being Nancy Drew.

Her love of crime fiction continued into adolescence when, one summer, she discovered a box full of Agatha Christie books with the original Fontana covers. 

After attending Coleraine High School, she went to university in Dundee to study medicine and has worked as a doctor since 1994, predominantly for the NHS.

She currently lives in North London where she has been a consultant in Emergency Medicine for over ten years. 

Heidi joins us for the 2.50pm-3.40pm Genre? What Genre? event.

Website: 

 www.heidiedmundson.co.uk 

KATE HOGARTH  worked for over thirty years as a professional actress - first based in New York, then London where she worked in film, television and on stage in the West End. 

Married with three grown children, she now finds herself (mostly) in Tring, where she has presented the Tring Today talk show and Sounds of the States on Tring Radio. 

She is also passionate about children's charities, devoting much time to IntoUniversity in London and the NSPCC. 

Kate concludes the BeaconLit festival in her 4pm-4.50pm interview with headliner Liz Harris.

Instagram:

@kate_hogarth1

LIZ HARRIS is an award-winning author of 29 novels. After graduating in Law in the UK, she moved to California where she led a varied life - from cocktail waitressing on Sunset Strip to secretary to the CEO of a large Japanese trading company. 

Upon returning to England, she completed a degree in English and then taught in a secondary school for a number of years before developing her writing career. 

Her latest series of sagas, ‘The House of McLeod’, is set in Scotland in the 1880s. Liz now lives in Windsor, Berkshire.

As a headliner she will be interviewed on her prolific career in the final event, on from 4pm-4.50pm with Kate Hogarth. 

Website:

lizharrisauthor.com