This summer, we celebrated the launch of our first-ever Debut Fiction series! Held at our on-site Bookshop and hosted by Sarah Gwonyoma, Literary Editor of Red Magazine and one of the most distinctive voices in British literary culture, the series shone a spotlight on seven brand-new authors and their stunning literary debuts – all fearless in their ambition and extraordinary in their range.
Remind yourself of our authors and their works below…
Imani Thompson – Honey
Imani Thompson’s Honey follows a Black Briton of Caribbean heritage at Cambridge who discovers a talent for murder, starting with a bee flicked into a professor’s drink. Sold in a ten-way Frankfurt auction across eight countries, Kirkus called it ‘Fleabag channelled by Valerie Solanas’.
Imani Thompson at The Bookshop
Liz Allan – In Bloom
Liz Allan’s In Bloom follows four fatherless girls in a dying Australian coastal town, told in a ferocious collective ‘we’ that crackles with teenage indignation, in the tradition of The Virgin Suicides; it was named an Observer Best Debut Novel of 2026.
Eden McKenzie-Goddard – Smallie
Eden McKenzie-Goddard’s Smallie is an intergenerational Windrush story spanning 1950s Barbados to 2018 London, in which a family must find a man their mother once loved to prove her right to remain in Britain. Caleb Azumah Nelson called it ‘gorgeous and heartwrenching.’
Eden McKenzie-Goddard and Sarah Gwonyoma at The Bookshop
Phil Melanson – Florenzer
Phil Melanson’s Florenzer is a queer historical novel set in fifteenth-century Florence, following Leonardo da Vinci, Lorenzo de’ Medici, and a priest at the heart of the Pazzi conspiracy, compared to Hilary Mantel in its historical rigour and immediacy.
Jem Calder – I Want You to Be Happy
Jem Calder’s I Want You to Be Happy renders an abortive romance between a frustrated novelist and an aspiring poet with devastating lightness; Sally Rooney called Calder ‘an extraordinarily gifted writer’ and the Sunday Times tipped it as the zeitgeist couple-novel of 2026.
Jem Calder at The Bookshop
Tobi Coventry – He’s the Devil
Tobi Coventry’s He’s the Devil is a queer horror novel about a good boy whose new flatmate brings something monstrous into the flat; the Literary Review called it ‘confident, confrontational and compulsively readable’, and Coventry, a former book scout who lives in East Sussex in a town full of haunted pubs, is a genuinely original new voice.
Tobi Coventry, Sarah Gwonyoma and Phil Melanson outside The Bookshop
Sufiyaan Salam – Wimmy Road Boyz
Sufiyaan Salam’s Wimmy Road Boyz follows three boys on a single surreal night on Manchester’s Curry Mile; winner of the #MerkyBooks New Writers’ Prize, the Guardian called Salam ‘a standard bearer for a new generation of literary novelists.’
The Bookshop at Latitude
We can’t wait to introduce you to more exceptional writers in 2027. Watch this space…
