Spotlit Field Notes - Issue 1
The literary festival newsletter
You can find us at spotlithub.com
Tinder for authors and festivals!
Welcome to Spotlit Field Notes, a newsletter for everyone involved in putting on book events in the UK; publishers, publicists, publishers, book shops, authors and programmers. We believe literary festivals are one of the great cultural innovations of the last 25 years. We are very grateful for everyone’s work across the industry to make this magic happen and wanted to bring all those different atoms together in one place.
Some of you will be reading this because you subscribed to Mathew’s literary festival newsletter BookAmp. Others will have already signed up to spotlithub.com - our new website whose purpose is to connect literary festivals with the best new books and authors.
Spotlit is the brainchild of Ilona Chavasse, Mathew Clayton and Rina Gill: over a pizza late last year, we were complaining about the literary festival eco-system. Ilona is an author frustrated with the lack of event opportunities, Mathew was still being pitched for a festival he finished programming a decade ago and Rina was a publicity war horse who had spent far too long fighting fires with agents and authors who were frustrated at not getting panel events at festivals.
What if there was a kind of literary Tinder? Something simple: publishers and publicists can upload blurbs, covers and biogs. Festivals can filter by subject, region, publisher, pub date and more.
And as former colleagues who had enjoyed a few margaritas together (see above) while keeping the wheels from falling off, we realised that we were the perfect trio to make it happen. At the moment Spotlit is completely free but at some point we will start charging the larger publishers to use the service (it will ALWAYS be free for festivals and small presses). There are over 100 books and authors already on the site - and we’re growing every day.
This newsletter will highlight some of these titles and bring you the latest literary festival news that has caught our eye . . .
The Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize 2026
In its tenth year, The Republic of Consciousness Prize - founded and run by the author and publisher Neil Griffiths - has found a new home and a new name by partnering with the Queen Mary University of London. Unusually, rather than a winner-takes-all format, the award splits its prize money between authors, translators and their publishers. The two joint winners in 2026 were Ghost Driver by Nell Osborne from Moist Books and Figures Crossing the Field Towards the Group by Rebecca Gransden from Tangerine Press.
The longlist also included Toothpull of St. Dunstan by Kevin Davey, from Aaaargh! Press, Darryl by Jackie Ess, from Divided Publishing, Spit by David Brennan, from époque press, The Weasel and the Whore by Martha Luisa Hernández Cadenas, translated by Julia Sanches and Jennifer Shyue, from Héloïse Press, Mistress Koharu by Noboru Tsujihara, translated by Kalau Almony, from Honford Star, On the Greenwich Line by Shady Lewis, translated by Katharine Halls, from Peirene Press and Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix, translated by Helen Stevenson, from Small Axes/HopeRoad.
New Writing North’s Debut Novelist List
We loved NWN’s answer to the London centric Observer’s Debut Novelist list. They have put together a ‘complementary’ list of novelists from their region. It includes two brilliant books already on Spotlit:
Stu Hennigan, based in Leeds, Keshed (Ortac Press) Stu’s debut novel is a study in masculinity called Keshed, his last book Ghost Signs, published by the wonderful Blue Moose, gained a considerable following. More recently he has been a judge of the Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize 2026 (see above).
Shaun Wilson, based in Cumbria, Malc’s Boy (Conduit Books) This is the debut novel from writer Jude Cook’s new publishing house, Mathew read it a couple of months ago and loved it. Details here. Also worth mentioning is Conduit’s next book Animal Nightlife by Koushik Banerjea that comes out in July.
The other titles were: Heba Al-Wasity, based in Greater Manchester, Weavingshaw (Bantam), Alys Cummings, based in North Tyneside, Murder Most Cryptic (Michael Joseph), K. L. Kaine, based in Yorkshire, Blood of Gods and Girls (Penguin), Rebecca Philipson, based in Durham, How to Get Away with Murder (Transworld), Louise Powell, based in Middlesbrough, Underdogs (John Murray Originals), Gab Torr, based in Sheffield, Hard Place (Simon & Schuster).
It would be lovely to feature lists from the other regional writing agencies. Email them to mathewclayton@gmail.com.
Catch-up . . .
In April, Spotlit went to The Alternative Book Fair London at Islington Library (made famous by Joe Orton whose received a prison sentence for defacing its books). We loved its mixture of free events and day-long indie press fair. We also caught up with Inpress, the independent publishing specialists supporting innovative presses in the UK and Ireland. We met the amazing Ali Isaac, whose memoir Imperfect Bodies is being published by Héloïse Press: on the Debut Authors Panel she spoke movingly about her daughter, her subject and heroine. We squeezed into the full-house Publishing Panel chaired by Will Dady, the publisher at Renard Press, to hear the brilliant Sam Jordison of Galley Beggar Press and Tom Conaghan of Scratch Books talk about the challenges but also the unique strengths that small presses possess.
After more than 20 years at the helm of one of the UK’s best-loved book festivals, Alistair Moffat will step down as a Director of the Borders Book Festival in June this year. In an interview with The Scotsman he commented on the campaign against the investment firm Baillie Gifford’s sponsorship, “people like Robert Macfarlane and Ali Smith and Zadie Smith who supported them ought to hang their heads in shame, frankly, because they did tremendous damage to the book festival sector, tremendous damage. The whole thing was so stupid and ill thought through. Baillie Gifford had been exemplary sponsors. They are terrific, and we miss them very much . . . I thought [what happened] was cultural vandalism.” He said the festival had been unable to find a single corporate sponsor to replace the company.
The Guardian reported how, “Adelaide Writers’ Week was sacrificed to save the bigger 2026 Adelaide festival, after the 8 January announcement by the board that controversial Palestinian Australian academic Randa Abdel-Fattah had been dumped from the program. Rosemarie Milsom has now been appointed the new director.
“I was fifty-two years old when I started waiting tables for the first time. It was 2013. At that point I had won a Pulitzer Prize and published a New York Times bestseller, but to say my writing career had stalled would be an understatement.” We also loved this piece in the Baffler about how authors do or don’t make money, The Profession That Doesn’t Exist.
Publishers and publicists please add your books to Spotlit! It is free and takes just a few minutes.
If you would like your event featured in the newsletter or would like to be interviewed about your festival drop us a line at: mathewclayton@gmail.com. This newsletter goes to over 700 people working in the sector.
Thank you for reading!
Ilona, Mathew and Rina
Love to see this! Thank you for doing it.