LitFest – Friday 4th April

Janet Sutherland

Janet Sutherland grew up on a dairy farm, she is the author of five poetry collections, most recently The Messenger House (Shearsman Books, 2023). Her previous collections all from Shearsman are Home Farm (2019), Bone Monkey (2014), Hangman’s Acre (2009) and Burning the Heartwood (2006).   The Messenger House, a hybrid collection, is about her great-great-grandfather’s travels to Serbia in the 1840’s with his friend Mr Gutch, a Queen’s Messenger. She is currently writing a new collection. Her poems are widely anthologised and published in magazines such as New Statesman, The Spectator and The North.  She won the 2017 Kent and Sussex Poetry Prize and received a Hawthornden Fellowship for 2018.  She has an MA in American Poetry and lives in Lewes, East Sussex. https://www.janetsutherland.co.uk/

Alex Josephy

Born in Brighton and a Sussex University graduate, Alex now lives and writes in Rye, and in Italy whenever possible. She has worked as a London state school teacher, university lecturer and NHS education adviser. Her most recent poetry publications are Again Behold the Stars, a Cinnamon Press pamphlet award winner, 2023, and Naked Since Faversham, Pindrop Press, 2020. Her poems have won the McLellan and Battered Moons prizes, and have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies. Alex’s new collection, A Little Bridge, is due out with Pindrop Press in 2025.

Ever wondered how to write a Murder Mystery? Join Nick Royle, chatting to Hope Wolf, and reading from his latest novel: A Hat for Hattie, a murder mystery, and you may well find out.

Nick is the author of several books, and he feels the most salient of which are: the novels, Quilt (2010) and An English Guide to Birdwatching (2017), the memoir Mother (2020) and the one-of-a-kind David Bowie, Enid Blyton and the Sun Machine (2023).