Our next Needlewriters evening will be on Thursday 15th October 2026, featuring Mat Riches (poetry), Beth Miller (prose) and Christine Hollywood (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).
Mat Riches is from Norfolk, but lives in Beckenham. He has previously worked in a plastics factory, a variety of pubs, and a book wholesaler, but currently works in market research and as ITV’s (unofficial) poet-in-residence. He’s also a trainee Bongosero. When he’s not doing those things, he’s either being a parent, a husband or running. Sometimes all of them at once. He co-runs Rogue Strands poetry evenings, and blogs at Wear The Fox Hat. A pamphlet, Collecting the Data, is out via Red Squirrel Press. One of these facts is not true.
Beth Miller is the author of seven novels, including the bestselling The Missing Letters of Mrs Bright (2020). Her seventh novel, The Friendship List, came out in 2025. She has also published two non-fiction books about Shakespeare and the Archers. She recently completed a four-year stint as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow, and is a tutor on the MA in Creative Writing and Publishing at West Dean College. She also teaches on the Creative Writing Programme in Brighton, and is a book coach and mentor for writers at all stages.
Christine Hollywood’s first poetry collection, Fragile Islands, was published in 2024. It was joint winner of the Indigo Dreams First Collection Competition. Christine began writing poetry while studying creative writing and its links to personal development and health. She went on to create a writing groupwork practice which has taken personal and expressive writing into primary and secondary schools, health and wellbeing charities, and community settings in both London and Sussex. Her interests include looking into the hidden issues that affect the lives of many of us in subtle and often unspoken ways, and in particular those which affect families, women and children. Some of her poems address these issues. She is currently working on a project with Professor Jim Orford, to draw attention to the subject of addiction and its impact on the family, using literature and poetry. They collaborated with poets and actors to present at Brighton Fringe in 2026.
needlewriters.co.uk 