Anne Charnock, "Alston Moor"

Anne Charnock studied Environment Science and Fine Art, and her latest novel, Alston Moor, is a work of eco-fiction. She won the Arthur C. Clark Award 2018 for Dreams Before the Start of Time, and the British Science Fiction Association Award 2017 for her novella, The Enclave. Her debut novel, A Calculated Life, was a finalist for the 2013 Philip K. Dick Award and the 2013 Kitschies Golden Tentacle Award. Anne’s writing career began in science journalism, and her articles appeared in The Guardian, New Scientist, International Herald Tribune among others. Lancaster University recently awarded her an honorary DLitt for her novels "on key topics including near-future environmental collapse."

About Alston Moor, by Anne Charnock
In an epic novel set on the North Pennine Moors, Elizabeth has abandoned avalanche science to restore desolate peatlands. She treks in the footsteps of Isabel who, five centuries earlier, herds her cattle to remote summering grounds. 

Both are reeling from the overwhelming crises of their day. In 1548, Isabel and her father, together with the priest in this poorest of parishes, grapple with the chaos of the Protestant Reformation. Today, a grieving Elizabeth fights to save an invaluable ecosystem, one that is threatened by wilful fire-raising and arson.

The entwined stories are told through multiple voices creating a rich portrait of England’s most remote landscape. At its heart, this deeply moving novel interrogates how society confronts crisis whether through science, faith or superstition.

You can read more about Alston Moor on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the novel. 

From Alston Moor

Christopher - May 2022

He scans across the moor, unsure exactly where they found the ruin. It stands a few stones high, he recalls, and he’ll know it when he sees it. From the ruin, they saw a single tree, so he heads towards the only one that’s visible from the path. And he smiles as he remembers that Abi could not believe a tree could survive out here through winter, seeing how blustery it felt even in May. If she were that tree, she said, she would pick up her roots and let the wind blow her somewhere warmer. 

He stumbles across the ruin, which squats in a slight hollow on the hillside, a few minutes scramble from the track. Clumps of reeds, which he does not remember from before, partly obscure what remains of the walls. Only now does he question what the hell he is doing here. Why come back? He hates himself for staying so angry. 

Isabel – May1548

Isabel knows the moment that changed her. Not the moment when she sat with a basket holding eight perfect eggs laid by their eight ordinary hens, when it dawned on her: these hens do the work and we take the profit. No, the moment that changed her occurred three years past at the Michaelmas fair in Hexham – the one time she travelled so far with her father. She stood before a stall selling cheeses. She stood transfixed by the sight of a single exotic fruit, an orange, on display – not for sale, mind. In that moment she gleaned that a world existed beyond these northern moors and valleys. A world where such a thing, this extraordinary orange, grows on trees or bushes or springs from the soil like cabbages, she knew not how. But she grasped that a place exists in the world where oranges are as ordinary as eggs.

Elizabeth – August 2022

When she switched her research from the Alps to working in peat bogs in the Pennines, she instantly drew looks of disappointment, bemusement, even from her sister. After the switch, Elizabeth received fewer invites to dinner. She supposed that her traveller’s tales became less riveting. No more derring-do. However, in some ways, Elizabeth feels that peat bogs suit her better, not so much in terms of the day-to-day research or the inherent dangers, but in terms of her as a person. She is introspective by nature – she accepts that – and she looks back on her days in the Alps as though she were accidentally caught up in a role bigger than her personality. In the movies, they would describe her as ‘cast against type’ as an avalanche scientist. Now she comes to think about it, her son is similarly cast against type. He is outgoing, extrovert, more like his father, and yet he works in insurance.

Mati Shemoelof, "Bagdad | Haifa | Berlin"

Mati Shemoelef, photo by Ali Ghandtschi

Mati Shemoelof is a Berlin-based writer, poet, curator and creative writing educator, originally from Haifa, Israel. He has published sixteen books of poetry, fiction, essays and drama in Israel and Germany, and his work moves between Hebrew, German, Arabic and English.

He is the co-founder of ANU – Jews and Arabs Writing in Berlin and the initiator of the Poetic Hafla, a literary and cultural series that brought together Hebrew, Arabic and German-speaking writers and artists in Berlin. He has also worked as a curator and editor and teaches Creative Writing in English, German and Hebrew.

His books published in Germany include the poetry collection Bagdad | Haifa | Berlin (AphorismA Verlag, 2019), Das kleine Boot in meiner Hand nenn ich Narbe (Parasitenpresse, 2023), and the novel Der Preis (PalmArtPress, 2025). His latest book, Fünfzehn Narben: Jüdisch-arabische Texte zu Politik und Poesie, a collection of essays and political and poetic texts, will be published by AphorismA Verlag in 2026. His first book written originally in German, Jiddische Sounds, Deutsche Wörter, will be published by Elif Verlag in 2027.

 

About Bagdad | Haifa | Berlin, by Mati Shemoelof, translated from Hebrew into German by Jan Kühne, Arabic translation by Nael Eltoukhy, Afterword by Jan Kühne

Bagdad | Haifa | Berlin brings together 40 poems from Mati Shemoelof’s Hebrew poetry books and presents them for the first time in German translation. The bilingual edition places the original Hebrew poems alongside Jan Kühne’s German translations, creating a dialogue between the language in which the poems were written and the language of Shemoelof’s new life in Berlin.

The three cities in the title mark three connected but very different worlds: Bagdad, the city from which Shemoelof’s Iraqi-Jewish family came; Haifa, where he was born and grew up; and Berlin, where he has lived since 2013 as a Hebrew-language writer.

The book brings these places together through questions of migration, memory, Mizrahi and Arab-Jewish identity, Jewish history, belonging and language. The poems move between family memories and contemporary political realities, between Israel and Germany, and between the experience of home and the experience of being a stranger.

Rather than presenting identity as something fixed, Bagdad | Haifa | Berlin shows it as something formed through movement. The three cities are not simply geographical locations. They become different layers of memory and belonging, carried by the poet from one language and country into another.

You can read more about Bagdad | Haifa | Berlin on the author's website here. Below, you can read two sample poems from the collection. 

From Bagdad | Haifa | Berlin 

Luca Serra, "This Is Home"

Originally from Northern Italy, Luca Serra has been living in Scotland for thirteen years. From an early age, he has been interested in creative activities such as writing and painting. He has dedicated himself to writing for about fifteen years and has so far written four novels and various short stories in Italian and English. In January 2020 he received the Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award for Fiction. Since early 2021 he became a literary editor and mentor at Product Magazine, where he mentors emerging writers as part of the "Write Here, Write Now" programme. He currently teaches literacy and Creative Writing at HMP Glenochil.

Luca is particularly interested in contemporary social issues such as immigration, identity, and the divisive politics of today. Through his writing, he aims to explore the challenges and experiences that come with moving to new, unfamiliar places and how the characters establish their identity and purpose in those places. His characters are often misfits and minorities who pull out the remarkable and, sometimes, absurd in ordinary, day-to-day lives.

This Is Home, his debut English novel, was published by Leamington Books in January 2026.

About This Is Home, by Luca Serra 
This Is Home is a vivid, multivoiced story cycle that follows characters forging new lives far from where they began. Serra’s novel moves between London and Glasgow, tracing the emotional landscapes of migration, friendship, and the fragile search for belonging.

You can read more about This Is Home on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the novel. 

From This Is Home
A Friday stroll on Sauchiehall street is never just a stroll. Brunilda had got used to it. You might exchange a smile with perfect strangers, often locals, carrying amicable manners in their blood, well proud of the definition "Scotland’s friendliest city," well proud of being one of those "People Make Glasgow" people. Then, a block away, you might witness the first puke of the weekend, vile fruit of a 2pm football drinking session. 1.6 miles of buskers, beggars, reckless youths, hen parties, leaving parties, stag dos, today’s neds and punks, tomorrow’s artists. It’s home of immigrants young and old, hipsters, rebels, people with no tribe, everyone belonging to a huge, infinite family: the Glaswegians. It’s a street of no structure, a street of pure, erratic life. 

Brunilda often wondered what her role was on those 1.6 miles of walking stories. She watched and absorbed, taking in words, phrases and scenes to share with mum and grandma, one day, back in Brazil, home: the only place where she felt that unique, visceral sense of belonging. Brazil was everything she had been so far, her foundation and youth. Glasgow was the present, the moment, and although it was growing in her, it retained the shapes, lights and colours of an unfamiliar place. She didn’t see herself chatting away with a busker or consoling a kid who’s fallen off the bike: she felt like she’d be stepping on somebody else’s toes. As consequences of actions were unpredictable, she simply attended that daily march of pure, erratic life, rather than participated. She was a passive spectator.

Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana, "Skinship" (スキンシップ)

 

Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana is author of two poetry collections: Sing Me Down from the Dark and Skinship, both published by Salt Publications. This year, she won the Frome Festival Crysse Morrison Poetry Prize, as well as Verve's February Poem of the Month competition, was placed third, by Mimi Khalvati, in the Kent and Sussex competition, and shortlisted for the Wolves Lit Festival competition. She is shortlisted for the 2026 Forwards Prize for Best Single Written Poem, for her poem, "Madam Gout," originally published by Magma.

Alexandra lived in Japan for ten years and has Master's degrees in Japanese Language and Culture and in Writing Poetry. She is based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and teaches for The Poetry School and The Poetry Business. Her most recent work is published or forthcoming in Pennine Platform, The North, Vervacious anthology (Verve Poetry Press), The Alchemy Spoon, and online in And Other Poems.

About Skinship, by Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana
Returning to Japan after a 15-year absence, our narrator is told she hasn’t changed. Yet everything has changed. Skinship examines our public and interior selves, the seen and the unseen, probing the complexities of relationships with lovers, kin, other women, and across cultures. These ideas are often explored through Japanese forms, including award-winning zuihitsu and haibun, and 2026 Forward Prize shortlisted "Madam Gout."

You can read more about Skinship on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read two sample poems from the collection. 

From Skinship

ふさわしくないもの

Unsuitable Things

           (after Sei Shōnagon) 

An obasan saying futota na to a foreigner: 

haven’t you put weight on? An old woman questioning 

the Japanese character, based on a competitive 

game of bridge. Pyramid tea bags that rip. On threads 

that twist around your index finger. A mother who twists 

words, shutting down conversation with her daughter: 

did you ring for a reason? A father telling his son he’s a quitter, 

because he leaves taekwondo. A son remonstrating 

with his mum, when she unplugs his gaming PC: 

are you a fucking moron? Chewing pellets of Rock Jaw gum, 

for better facial aesthetic. A father who won’t let him win 

arm wrestling. And a mother who sees a rival 

in her daughter, who, as I bend to kiss her cheek, 

says, I thought you were going to eat me.