Our next Needlewriters evening will be on Thursday 16th January 2025, featuring Pratibha Castle (poetry), Jeremy Page (prose), and Clare Best (poetry). Our previously scheduled prose reader Roz Houchin is unfortunately unable to read but we hope she will join us on another date soon!
This will be a LIVE event at the John Harvey Tavern in Lewes (upstairs room): doors 6pm for a 6.30pm start.
Tickets £5 (£3 students/unwaged and claiming benefit) available on the door.
Books will be for sale on the night (cash only please).
Pratibha Castle, Irish born and living in West Sussex, is widely publicised in journals such as Agenda, Lighthouse, Stand, Tears in the Fence, Ink Sweat & Tears, London Grip, The High Window, Orbis, Spelt and forthcoming in Under the Radar and The Stony Thursday Book. She was shortlisted twice in The Bridport Prize, highly commended and received special mention in The Welsh Poetry, Indigo Dreams – collection and single poem – competitions, and recognised in The King Lear, Repton, and Bray Literary competitions. Her second pamphlet Miniskirts in The Waste Land was a Poetry Book Society Winter Selection 2023. A frequent reader on The Poetry Place: West Wilts Radio, Pushcart and Michael Marks nominated, she is currently seeking a home for her full collection which expands on the theme of her prize winning debut pamphlet A Triptych of Birds & A Few Loose Feathers (Hedgehog Poetry Press).
Jeremy Page writes poetry and prose. His novella, London Calling (and other stories) was published by Cultured Llama, and he is the author of three full collections of poems, most recently The Naming (Frogmore Press, 2021), and five pamphlets. His versions of the Lesbia poems of Catullus were published as The Cost of All Desire by Ashley Press in 2011 and his play, Verrall of the White Hart, was performed at the White Hart in Lewes in 2014. Formerly Director of the Centre for Language Studies at the University of Sussex, he has edited the literary journal The Frogmore Papers since 1983.
Clare Best has published a ground-breaking prose memoir, The Missing List (Linen Press 2018) as well as three full collections of poetry and several pamphlets and collaborative works. Her most recent collection is Beyond the Gate (Worple Press 2023). In 2020-21 Clare held a Fellowship at Guildhall School of Music & Drama where she co-created chamber operas and song cycles. Current works-in-progress include a multi-genre memoir, a collaboration with composer Michael Bascom on a musical realisation for soprano and chorus of her long poem ‘Salting’ (from Beyond the Gate) and an audio documentary piece with composer Abel M.G.E. inspired by love letters written during World War II. Clare is an Associate Lecturer with The Open University and a Tutor for The Arvon Foundation. For nearly twenty years she lived in and around Lewes before moving in 2018 to Sudbourne, near the Suffolk coast. www.clarebest.co.uk
Robert Hamberger has been shortlisted for a Forward prize and awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship. His poetry has been featured on the Guardian Poem of the Week website and in various British, American and Japanese anthologies. He has published six poetry pamphlets and three full-length collections. His fourth collection Blue Wallpaper is forthcoming from Waterloo Press. His prose memoir with poems A Length of Road will be published by John Murray in 2020. 
Martin Nathan has worked as a labourer, showman, pancake chef, fire technician, and a railway engineer. His short fiction has been published by Tangent Press, HCE and Grist. His novel A Place of Safety is published by Salt Publishing, his poetry by Finished Creatures. He contributed a monologue to Young Vic’s ‘My England’ project. Website: 
Anna Reckin is a poet and writer based in Norwich. Her second collection, Line to Curve, appeared from Shearsman in 2018, and she has had poems, essays and reviews published in Poetry Wales, Jacket2, Long Poem Magazine, and a selection in the anthology Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets. She was longlisted for the inaugural Women Poets’ Prize in 2018.
Clare Best’s first poetry collection, Excisions, was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize, 2012. Other publications include Treasure Ground, Breastless, CELLand Springlines. Clare’s prose memoir The Missing List (Linen Press) was published last year. Tonight she will read from her new poetry collection Each Other (Waterloo Press 2019) – ‘closely observed, exquisitely wrought poems about love and its endurance’ (Mara Bergman). Clare lived in Lewes for twenty years and co-founded Needlewriters – she now lives near the Suffolk coast. Website: 
needlewriters.co.uk 