Genesis Emerging Writers 2022-23 programme

The 2022-2023 cohort consists of ten mentees and ten mentors, matched by writing genre. There are four poets, three fiction writers and three non-fiction writers.

Supported by the Genesis Foundation.

Emerging writers in the fiction category:

Amy Abrahams
Helen Bain
Leeor Ohayon

Their mentors are Charlotte Mendelson, Ashley Hickson-Lovence and Philip Hensher.

Emerging writers in the non-fiction category:

Caroline Gardiner
Tilly Rubens
Aaron Taylor

Their mentors are Bidisha, Anne Sebba and Dominic Selwood.

Emerging writers in the poetry category:

Oakley Flanagan
Rachel Lewis
Amelia Loulli
Natalie Perman

Their mentors are Wayne Holloway-Smith, Ruth Padel, Clare Pollard and Jack Underwood.

Our 2022-23 emerging writers

Our ten emerging writers are Helen Bain, Natalie Perman, Amy Abrahams, Rachel Lewis, Tilly Rubens, Oakley Flannagan and Aaron Taylor.

Helen Bain

Helen’s novel-in-progress, The Garden, takes inspiration from – and pays tribute to – Thomas Hardy in its structure, themes and subject matter, although it takes place in the present day. It is set in a tenanted Estate village in the English countryside where a strict societal hierarchy presides, and questions of morality, corruption and power play out.

Natalie Perman

TESTAMENTS emerges from a fascination with binding language – such as promises, oaths and vows – how they commit us to the truth of things, taking on legal and sacred character.

Leaning on John Kerrigan’s work on binding language and taking ideas of transformation as theme, this pamphlet writes from the breakdown of a relationship, when the threads binding us to others become knotted, unravelling in frustrated promises and vows.

Amy Abrahams

Amy’s novel, set today, is about two sisters – half-sisters, actually – with a large age gap; as a result, they are not close. The novel takes place over a summer where certain events look to divide them further, but ultimately – spoiler alert – bring them closer together.

Rachel Lewis

Rachel is completing a poetry collection exploring her connection to her family’s history as Jews in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.

Tilly Rubens

Tilly’s book is titled Sisters in Law: How Four Women Fought to Become Lawyers. It examines the lives of the young pioneers who took on the legal establishment in 1913.

Oakley Flannagan

G&T is a book length poem written in free-verse and prose, exploring themes of queerness, sexuality and shame (forthcoming with Out-Spoken Press in May). It forms a third of a larger writing project currently in development, as Oakley works towards their first full-length collection.

Aaron Taylor

Art, Money, Lies is about the dark side of the global art market. It explores how dishonest dealers have swindled investors and filled exhibitions with forgeries, and how art has been used to launder the proceeds of crime and evade international sanctions. It shows that fraud and financial crime are the inevitable consequence of the art world’s obsession with secrecy. And it explains what the art market must do to change.

Caroline Gardiner

Slow. Caroline embarks on a personal journey to reclaim positive aspects of slowness. From Slow Travel, debates with Slow Scientists, and sampling Slow Food, Caroline engages in conversations with people like her, talking to neuroscientists about possible benefits of slowness, such as the effect of mindfulness on brain activity. Could slowness improve mental and physical health?

Amelia Loulli

Amelia’s pamphlet of poetry, Self Portrait in Pain, explores the female body in pain and the ways in which we can experience healing. Inspired by the work of visual artist Tracy Emin, she explores the potentials of the connections between art and poetry.

Evie Ward

Leeor’s collection of short stories features 12 interconnected short stories told by queer, third-generation British Jews of Mizrahi descent, set in London and Berlin. The stories are told by minorities-within-minorities-within-minorities living in perpetual exile and estrangement from their communities, families, lovers, and friends. The stories take place in the liminal spaces of their exile, where multifaceted identities and disparate worlds collide and the protagonists are forced to contend with overlapping sources of marginalisation, heartbreak and love, loneliness and friendship, continuity and change.