Our next Needlewriters evening will be on Thursday16th April 2026, featuring Naomi Foyle (poetry), Barry Smith (poetry) and Kay Syrad (poetry).
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).
Naomi Foyle is a Sussex-based British-Canadian poet, science fiction novelist, dramatist and essayist. Her four poetry collections are: The Night Pavilion, an Autumn 2008 PBS Recommendation, The World Cup (2010) and Salt & Snow (2025), all with Waterloo Press; and Adamantine from PigHog/Red Hen Press (US/UK, 2019). Her ten pamphlets include Red Hot & Bothered, winner of the 2008 Apples & Snakes ‘The Book Bites Back’ competition. Four of her poems have been ‘Poem of the Week’ in the Guardian, including ‘Salt, Snow, Earth’, one of two filmpoem collaborations with Wendy Pye and Razia Aziz. ASTRA, her theatrical adaptation of her novels The Gaia Chronicles, won the 2022 Brighton Fringe ONCA Green Curtain Award. Naomi is Reader in Critical Imaginative Writing at the University of Chichester, and Poetry and Fiction Editor of Critical Muslim and Gramarye. For her poetry and essays about Ukraine she won the 2014 Hryhorii Skovoroda Prize.
Barry Smith is a both a poet and an arts festival producer. He is currently Director of the South Downs Poetry Festival and was one of the founding members of the Festival of Chichester. Barry edits the annual magazine, Poetry & All That Jazz. He curates the poetry for Blakefest and is Patron of the Shelley Memorial Project. As a poet, his collection Performance Rites (Waterloo Press) has been described as ‘a masterpiece’ by both Acumen Literary Journal and Sentinel Literary Quarterly. His latest collection, Reeling and Writhing (VOLE Books/Dempsey & Windle) has been endorsed by Louis de Bernieres as ‘mysterious, rich in imagery and feeling.’ His poetry has been published in many magazines and journals as well as being shortlisted for the BBC Proms Poetry and the Culture Matters Bread & Roses awards and nominated for the T.S. Eliot Prize.
Kay Syrad’s fourth collection of poetry, yellow noon-day, was published by Cinnamon Press in 2025. She is former Poetry Editor of the longstanding poetry journal Envoi and writes about poetry and art for a range of publications. Kay also co-runs eco-poetry courses and workshops, and has co-edited a number of anthologies, including Wild Correspondings: an eco-poetry source book (Elephant Press, 2021). Other publications include two novels, The Milliner and the Phrenologist (2009/2012) and Send (2015), both with Cinnamon Press; also a number of collaborative art-texts including Exchange (Little Toller, 2015); The evolution of a thought about courage in the Anthropocene (Elephant Press, 2024); and her limited edition book, work of the lightship men: 1000 tasks (2014) was purchased by the National Maritime Museum for their permanent collection.
needlewriters.co.uk 