Our next Needlewriters evening will be on Thursday 9th October 2025, featuring Robert Hamberger (poetry), P.D. Viner (prose), and Phil Vernon (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).
Robert Hamberger has been shortlisted and highly commended for Forward prizes. He has been awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship and won The London Magazine Poetry Prize 2023. His poetry has been published in The Observer, The Spectator, New Statesman, Gay Times and The Gay & Lesbian Review. He has twice been featured as the Guardian Poem of the Week and has appeared in British, American, Irish and Japanese anthologies. Blue Wallpaper (Waterloo Press) was shortlisted for the 2020 Polari Book Prize. His memoir A Length of Road: Finding myself in the footsteps of John Clare was published by John Murray in 2021. His fifth collection Nude Against A Rock (Waterloo Press) was published in 2024 and longlisted for the Polari Book Prize, 2025. His website is www.roberthamberger.co.uk.
P. D. Viner is an award-winning crime novelist and film-maker. He is the author of the Dani Lancing/Sad Man series, published by Random House, as well two stand-alone thrillers, The Call and The Choice, published by Hera. He is a book reviewer for crime magazine ShotsMag, and is currently one of the judges for the Glass Bell award. He acts as a writing mentor and teaches creative writing. He runs The Goldsboro Writing Academy, with Goldsboro Books and the David Headley Literary Agency, and manages the Beyond the Book Festival in Brighton.
Phil Vernon returned to the UK in 2004 after spending two decades in different parts of Africa. Originally trained as a forester, he retired in 2024 after many years in international humanitarian and peacebuilding work. His version of the mediaeval hymn Stabat Mater with music by Nicola Burnett Smith has been performed internationally. His first two poetry collections were Poetry After Auschwitz (Sentinel, 2020) and Watching the Moon Landing (Hedgehog Poetry Press, 2022). Foreshadowing (Hedgehog Poetry Press), a micro-pamphlet based on the life of Martin Luther, and his third full collection, Guerrilla Country (Flight of the Dragonfly Press), exploring peace and conflict within our social, political and physical environment, were published in 2024. He was one of three poets featured in Tree Poets: Rivers of Stone (Hedgehog Poetry Press, 2025). He is currently seeking a publisher for a new collection: Angles of Repose.
needlewriters.co.uk 