The Escalator New Writing Fellowships offer emerging writers from the East of England the chance to develop their work through an inspiring programme of professional mentoring.
Meet the mentors for this year’s cohort, who will form part of the judging panel for entries and will also offer practical advice and creative feedback to selected writers over the eight-month period.
Santanu Bhattacharya
Santanu Bhattacharya is the author of two novels, One Small Voice and Deviants. One Small Voice was an Observer Best Debut Novel for 2023 and was shortlisted for the Author’s Club Best First Novel Award and the Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize. Deviants won the Rainbow Award and BLF-Atta Galata Prize 2025 and was longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize. His short fiction and essays have appeared in The Bombay Literary Magazine, Commonwealth Writers’ adda, the Daunt Books’ essay anthology Over the Water, the Verve Books’ anthology Queerphoria, and Token magazine. Santanu is the recipient of the Desmond Elliott Prize Residency, the Mo Siewcharran Prize, the Life Writing Prize, and a London Writers’ Award. He grew up in India, studied at the University of Oxford, and now lives in London.
Image © Behrin Ismailov
Emma Healey
Emma Healey grew up in London and completed her first degree in bookbinding. She then worked in libraries, bookshops, art galleries, and universities, before studying for the MA in Creative Writing at UEA. She is the author of Sweat (2025), Whistle in the Dark (2018), and Elizabeth is Missing (2014) which sold over a million copies worldwide, won the Costa First Novel Award, and was made into a BBC film starring Glenda Jackson. She lives in Norwich with her husband, daughter and cat.
Image © Charlotte Gray
Ayanna Lloyd Banwo
Ayanna Lloyd Banwo is a writer from Trinidad and Tobago. Her debut novel When We Were Birds was the 2023 winner of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Author’s Club Best First Novel Award, the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award, and the American Book Award. It was also shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize and the McKitterick Prize and named one of the UK Observer’s Best Debuts and The Economist’s Best Books of 2022. Her short fiction and non-fiction have been published in Moko Magazine, Small Axe and PREE, among others and shortlisted for the Small Axe Literary Competition and the Wasafiri New Writing Prize. She is the 2023 winner of the Eccles Centre & Hay Festival Writer’s Award and was named a 2024 Rising Star in UK writing by the National Centre for Writing and The British Council. She currently lives in Norwich and is at work on her second novel.
Owen Nicholls
Owen Nicholls is an author and screenwriter. His first two romantic fiction novels, Love, Unscripted and Perfect Timing were published by Hachette in the UK, Penguin Random House in the US and Harper Collins in Canada. He has a Masters in Screenwriting from the University of East Anglia and his screenwork has been optioned for both TV and Film. Owen’s latest novel, The Missing Year is being published by Bedford Square Publishers in 2027.
Owen has written for NME, EMPIRE and Total Film on the subjects of Film, TV and Music. He has contributed research and writing to several episodes of the History Daily Podcast. His work was selected by the National Centre for Writing for the Escalator Scheme in 2017. He was invited back to be a mentor on the scheme in 2021, and again in 2026. Owen lives in Norfolk with his wife and two children.
Jyoti Patel
Jyoti Patel was born in Paris to British Indian parents and grew up in North West London. She is a graduate of the University of East Anglia’s Prose Fiction MA and winner of the 2021 #Merky Books New Writers’ Prize. Her writing has previously been published as part of We Present’s ‘Literally’ series and in the anthology for the 2022 Bristol Short Story Prize, for which she was shortlisted. Her debut novel, The Things That We Lost, was praised as one of the Observer’s 10 Best New Novels for 2023 and listed as a finalist for the Eastern Eye Arts Culture and Theatre Awards 2024.
Past Escalator mentors
Diran Adebayo, Tahmina Anam, Megan Bradbury, Sally Cline, Natasha Cooper, Jill Dawson, Michael Donkor, Yvvette Edwards, Bernardine Evaristo, Midge Gillies, Danny Hahn, Shelley Harris, Ashley Hickson-Lovence, Tobias Hill, Joanna Hines, Kerry Hudson, Benjamin Johncock, Anjali Joseph, Gillian McClure, Katherine McMahon, Courttia Newland, Alex Preston, Kate Pullinger, David Rain, Ross Raisin, Cathy Rentzenbrink, Amy Sackville, Guy Saville, Nikesh Shukla, Michelle Spring, Cathi Unsworth, Hayley Webster, Kate Worsley.
