Getting Your Foot in the Door

Karen Powell grew up in Rochester, Kent but now lives in York with her family. She works at York Minster Fund, a charity which raises funds for the conservation and restoration of the cathedral. She is the author of The River Within (Europa Editions UK, 2020). Her forthcoming novel Fifteen Wild Decembers, a reimagining of the short life of Emily Bronte, will be published in September 2023, also with Europa Editions UK.

Ross Raisin is the author of four novels: A Hunger (2022), A Natural (2017), Waterline (2011) and God’s Own Country (2008). His work has won and been shortlisted for over ten literary awards. He won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year award in 2009, and in 2013 was named on Granta’s once a decade Best of Young British Novelists list. In 2018 he was awarded a Fellowship by the Royal Society of Literature.

With a DNA profile that lights up like a satellite photograph of earth, Saara El-Arifi’s heritage is intrinsically linked to the themes she explores in her writing. She was raised in the Middle East until her formative years, when her family swapped the Abu Dhabi desert for the English Peak District hills. This change of climate had a significant impact on her growth—not physically, she’s nearly 6ft—and she learned what it was to be Black in a white world. El-Arifi knew she was a storyteller from the moment she told her first lie. Though her stories have developed beyond the ramblings of a child, she still appreciates the thrill of a well-told tale.