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.

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 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 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 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.

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.

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 Poetry Circle. 

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

EP JENKINS will be performing in the Poetry Circle. Her bio and photograph will shortly be uploaded.

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 Poetry Circle. 

Website:

www.KaranChambers.com

Instagram:

@KaranChambersPoetry

Bluesky: 

@KaranChambers.bsky.social

PIPPA CHAPPELL will be leading a writing workshop. Her profile is forthcoming. 

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.

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 new 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 Genre? What Genre? discussion.

X and Instagram: 

@BramwellLawes

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. 

Website:

lizharrisauthor.com