playforth News, Readings

Anika Carpenter (prose), Robin Houghton (poetry), and Maria Jastrzębska (prose) – Thursday 15 January

Our next Needlewriters evening will be on Thursday 15th January 2026, featuring Anika Carpenter (prose), Robin Houghton (poetry), and Maria Jastrzębska (prose).

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).

Anika Carpenter is a flash fiction author based in Brighton. Her stories have been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and the Bath Flash Fiction Award and nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and Best Small Fictions. She runs monthly ekphrastic writing workshops online and in-person flash fiction courses for Evolution Arts. Her work has appeared in numerous online journals and in several flash fiction anthologies. You can find links to her work at www.anikacarpenter.com 

Robin Houghton‘s first full poetry collection, The Mayday Diaries, was published by Pindrop Press in May 2025. She is the author of five pamphlets including Why? And Other Questions which was a joint winner of the Live Canon Pamphlet competition in 2020. Her newest publication is Yo-Yo, a handmade limited edition mini-pamphlet now in its second edition. Robin’s poetry is published widely in magazines including Mslexia, The Frogmore Papers, The Rialto, Poetry News & Magma. With Peter Kenny, she has co-hosted the podcast Planet Poetry since 2020. Robin is a Trustee of The Poetry Society. robinhoughtonpoetry.co.uk

Maria Jastrzębska was born in Warsaw Poland and came to the U.K as a child.  She has published several pamphlets and five full-length collections, most recently Small Oddyseys (Waterloo Press). She co-edited various anthologies including Queer in Brighton (New Writing South). She translated Justyna Bargielska’s selected poems The Great Plan B (Smokestack Press) from Polish and co-translated Iztok Osojnik’s Elsewhere from Slovene. Her own selected poems have been translated into Polish and Romanian. Her work is widely anthologised from Mustn’t Grumble Writing by Disabled Women (Women’s Press) to You’re Never Too Much (First Ink/Macmillan) and is archived in the British Library project Poetry and Translation. She’s been involved as a writer for many projects, Dementia Diaries drama and Snow Q cross-arts project with Lewes Live Literature, Speaking Solidarity anti-bullying of LGBTQ+ students project, What We Leave We Carry Writers’ Mosaic migrant stories project. Currently she is writing a memoir. www.mariajastrzebska.com

playforth News, Readings

Celia Hunt (prose), Robin Houghton (poetry), Imogen Harris (prose) and Peter Kenny (poetry) – Thursday 11 January

Our next Needlewriters evening will be on Thursday 11th January 2024, featuring Celia Hunt (prose), Robin Houghton (poetry), Imogen Harris (prose) and Peter Kenny (poetry). Nb this is an updated line-up since originally advertised, and we hope to continue featuring FOUR readers at each event throughout 2024!

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).

Celia Hunt ran and taught the MA in Creative Writing for Personal Development at the University of Sussex for 14 years. She is the author of three books: Therapeutic Dimensions of Autobiography in Creative Writing (2000), Writing: Self and Reflexivity (with Fiona Sampson, 2006), and Transformative Learning through Creative Life Writing (2013). She also edited (with Fiona Sampson) The Self on the Page: Theory and Practice of Creative Writing in Personal Development (1998) and has had poetry published. She retired from Sussex in 2010 and in the last few years has been writing a self-exploratory book on her experience of learning across her life. It incorporates and explores poems and extracts from fiction she wrote in the past and recreates episodes from her life using literary techniques. She will be reading a section from this book for Needlewriters.

Robin Houghton is the author of four poetry pamphlets: Why? And Other Questions, joint winner of the Live Canon Pamphlet Competition 2019, All the Relevant Gods, joint winner of the Cinnamon Press Pamphlet Competition 2018, The Great Vowel Shift, (Telltale Press, 2014) and Foot Wear, a handmade limited-edition illustrated micro-pamphlet. Her work is widely published in magazines and anthologies and she was awarded the Poetry Society’s Hamish Canham Prize in 2013. Non-fiction books include A Guide to Getting Published in UK Poetry Magazines (Telltale, 2020) and Blogging for Creatives (Ilex Press, 2012). Robin co-hosts the podcast Planet Poetry, now in its fourth season, and she compiles a (free) quarterly list of poetry magazines’ submissions windows. Her first full collection, The Mayday Diaries, is forthcoming from Pindrop Press in 2024. Her ‘other life’ is in choral singing; she is co-director of The Lewes Singers. robinhoughtonpoetry.co.uk

Imogen Harris is a graduate from the Oxford University Creative Writing Masters program. She is a freelance writer and a publicist in the art industry, as well as an award-winning voice performer for the production company Rusty Quill.

Peter Kenny co-hosts the Planet Poetry podcast with Robin Houghton. Poetry publications include Sin Cycle (e.ratio, New York 2020) The Nightwork (Telltale Press 2014) and A Guernsey Double (2010, Guernsey Arts Commission). His dark fiction short stories have appeared in Supernatural Tales, Horla, Frogmore Papers – and several US publications. His six comedy plays, include A Glass of Nothing, performed in Brighton and Edinburgh. An ongoing collaboration with classical composer Dr Matthew Pollard has resulted in high-concept pieces such as This Concert Will Fall In Love With You (2010) findable on Spotify.

rhneedles News, Readings

Robin Houghton, Nicholas Royle, Jonathan Totman – April 5, 2018

Our next event is on Thursday 5th April 2018, upstairs at the John Harvey Tavern, Bear Yard, Cliffe High St, Lewes BN7 2AN.

Doors open 7pm, readings start 7.45pm.

Tickets £5 (£3 students, and the unwaged and claiming benefit) at the door on the night.

Readers: Robin Houghton (Poetry), Nicholas Royle (Prose) and Jonathan Totman (poetry)

Robin Houghton

Robin Houghton’s first poetry pamphlet was The Great Vowel Shift (2014) from Telltale Press, the poets’ publishing collective she co-founded. All the Relevant Gods (2018) was joint-winner of the Cinnamon Press Pamphlet Competition 2017. Her work appears in numerous magazines and in anthologies including The Best New British and Irish Poets 2017 (Eyewear). She recently self-published a hand-made mini pamphlet, Foot Wear, and has written three non-fiction books. She blogs at robinhoughtonpoetry.co.uk

Nicholas Royle

Nicholas Royle teaches English at the University of Sussex. His books include Telepathy and Literature: Essays on the Reading Mind (1991), E. M. Forster (1999), The Uncanny (2003), How to Read Shakespeare (2005), Veering: A Theory of Literature (2011), and two novels: Quilt (2010) and An English Guide to Birdwatching (2017). He is currently completing a book about the writings of Hélène Cixous.

Jonathan Totman

Jonathan Totman grew up in Sussex. He was Fenland Poet Laureate 2015 and co-founded The Fenland Reed the same year. His poems have been published in Brittle Star, Envoi, The Frogmore Papers, The Interpreter’s House, Lighthouse and Orbis, and he will appear in Best New British and Irish Poets 2018 (Eyewear Publishing). His debut pamphlet Explosives Licence was a winner in the 2018 iOTA Shot Pamphlet Competition and will be published this summer by Templar Poetry.