Writing Clinic - Mentoring for Writers

15/07/2026

My "long awaited" new novel, is coming out with Salt Publishing in June 2027. It's taken ten years to write, which is shorter than "Belonging" took. Here's Salt's description, which is much better than I have been able to articulate it.

"The Fallen opens in Abruzzo, autumn 1943, as Rana Ranjit Singh, a Sikh officer who escaped from an Indian Army POW camp, takes refuge in a remote farmhouse. The girl who finds him at the point of a pitchfork – 16-year-old Zola Sabatini – and her mother hide him through the German occupation. What grows between them is fierce and unspoken. When the Germans arrive at the farm, everything they have begun to build is broken in a single night. He writes to her for five years; she never replies. Now he is going back to find out why."

I absolutely love the cover design too. It's such a clever design but you won't know why till you've read the novel.

17/06/2026

Dear friends. I'm making a very personal appeal for someone who is very close to my heart. Aya is 24 years old. She lives in Gaza and I have been mentoring her for We Are Not Numbers for the last 2 1/2 years. Like most people in Gaza, she has been through hell and all her dreams for the future have been put on hold, with no end in sight.
Despite her youth and inexperience when this current conflict started, and suffering a life-threatening medical crisis, Aya has shown huge courage in pursuing her ambition to be a journalist. She is one of the most talented writers I have mentored and her work has appeared in major international publications, including The Guardian, Mondoweiss, The Hill, and Electronic Intifada. Like many brave journalists there, she continues to tell the world the story of what is happening in Gaza, the deliberate attempted obliteration of a whole people, and their culture and history, and how they are being deliberately deprived of food, medicine, shelter, and even the most basic means of survival.
Aya has now been offered the chance of doing a Masters degree abroad in Journalism and Digital Media. She has always been interested in storytelling, communication, and using media to share people’s experiences and perspectives. But time is short - we have just a few months to raise her full tuition fees. If you can help with even a small donation, and/or can share with your friends and on your social media, you would be doing an immense act of human kindness.
This is the fundraiser that I set up for Aya, now assisted by her fiancé, who is in Egypt and longs to be reunited with her.

I am a writer and volunteer mentor for We Are Not Numbers (WANN), a platform that shares authentic stories from the next generation of Palestinian writers. I am raising urgent funds for Aya Al-Hattab, one of our exceptionally talented young writers, to help cover her tuition fees for an upcoming mas...

24/05/2026

On Friday I signed a contract with Salt for my second novel, "The Fallen". It's been a very long time in the writing - though not as long as "Belonging" - but in the meantime I have been doing really worthwhile and rewarding work with the Royal Literary Fund, running Reading Rounds in the community, in hospices, soon in prisons, and working with refugees, in addition to volunteering for We Are Not Numbers as an editor and mentor for young writers in Gaza. And I am now a grandmother to two gorgeous children who live just opposite me and whom I see nearly every day. It's a satisfying life, of which writing is only one strand, and I feel very very lucky to have such unexpected riches so late in my life.

Celebrating 27 years of independent British publishing. Explore award-winning literary and genre fiction from Salt – the home of beautiful books you won't forget. Browse our titles.

11/12/2025

This is such a superb piece of writing, done under the most terrible pressures. One can learn a lot about how to write a story from Samah's use of personal observations and small concrete and sensory details. The pictures are superb too.

Here is her fundraiser if you're moved by it to want to help:

On my third trip to the city, everything felt different—strange, suffocating, and heavy.

22/11/2025

This is a good read. I think he may be right. I was a melancholy child and books saved me, even - or maybe especially - the miserable ones. And I can confirm the Hans Fallada and the Coetzee are brilliant. I tend to prefer War and Peace to Anna Karenina (I could never really understand her passion for Count Vronsky) but it's true that it's not as depressing. I haven't read his latest yet but I can also recommend Rabih Alameddine's 'An Unnecessary Woman'. I'm adding the others to my list too.

I’ve always read my way through depressions. When my world sucks, I shut the drapes, hide under the cover, and read. And I will read everything: novels, classics, epic fantasy, romance, spy novels,…

17/10/2025

A reminder about the free Hey! Festival tomorrow at the Hillcrest Community Centre in Newhaven. The festival starts at 2pm and I'll be talking to Ahmed Alnaouq the founder of We Are Not Numbers promptly at 2.15. It's only half an hour so don't be later. There's art, music, poetry and writing workshops as well, all packed into 4 hours.

09/10/2025

Don't miss the FREE Hey! Festival in Newhaven on 18th October. Just one afternoon - 4-6pm - with lots of different creative events including poetry, writing workshops, art and music, and the opening event will be me interviewing Ahmed Alnaouq, the co-founder of We Are Not Numbers about the work we do mentoring young writers in Gaza, and how they find the strength and motivation under the current horrific conditions there to keep showing up to tell the world what is happening.

01/10/2025

Writing, poetry, storytelling, talks, and I'll be interviewing Ahmed Alnaouq, the co-founder of with Dr Refaat Alareer who was murdered, along with his whole family, in Gaza. WANN is an organisation that nurtures and mentors young Gazan writers and we will also have some readings from their moving stories and poems in the new WANN book that came out in UK in May and immediately went to the top of the bestseller lists.

Hey! Festival - there are going to be different ones across the country, there's already been one in Doncaster, but particularly where Reform is polling well - is a radically new kind of discursive festival, one that dares to challenge the present political landscape. And it is coming to Newhaven on...

11/09/2025

A powerful example of the use of voice in writing. I love the sudden switch from the chaos of the situation to the inner reflections of the writer as he returns home empty-handed. I marvel also at how people are still able to write with such passion and skill in the midst of such privations.

For Israel, the food airdrop is not a humanitarian consideration. It is a means of control and humiliation.

23/07/2025

Delighted to say that The Literary Hub has picked up a piece from one of our We Are Not Numbers writers.

Photo by Esraa Abo Qamar A small bookstall in the central Gaza Strip is keeping reading alive amidst Israel’s unrelenting chaos and violence, The Electronic Intifada reports. The stall, called Eqra…