Norwich-based writer George Harrison participated in the Escalator New Writing Fellowships in 2022. In January 2025, his debut novel Season was published by Eye Books. Below, George reflects on the importance of mentoring and the impact of Norwich on his writing. Visit George’s website →

You can read the Telegraph’s review of Season here, and order the book.

Congratulations on your forthcoming debut, Season. The book will land in January 2025, a little more than a year after you completed your time as an Escalator writer. Can you talk us through the journey from the end of Escalator, to this book being published?

I read an extract from Season at the Escalator Showcase in the summer of 2023. By then – at the formal end of the Escalator programme – I had a polished novel which felt ready for submission. I read it through once more post-Escalator and made some final tweaks, and towards the end of 2023 I sent it to Tom Cull – a literary agent I know through my freelance ghostwriting work. Tom took on the novel, and we went out on submission in early 2024. Among other places, the manuscript landed in the inbox of my eventual editor, Simon Edge at the independent publisher Eye Books. It took just four days for Simon to make an offer, and it was very clear to me that Eye’s fiction imprint, Lightning, would be the perfect home for the book. The best thing about being with a smaller press is that you can involve yourself closely in the publishing process, and over the summer of 2024 – a year on from the Showcase – I was deep into discussions about the cover, the typeset, and our plans for marketing my debut novel… the kind of thing you dream about as an aspiring author. Simon did suggest some incredibly incisive edits, which I was happy to make, but otherwise the manuscript isn’t greatly changed from the wad of pages I ended up with at the end of Escalator.

 Your mentor on Escalator was Michael Donkor. How did working with him help you refine Season during Escalator?

I had a bit of a head start in that I had already drafted a much shorter version of Season around the time of my Escalator application. Back then, Season was a scanty little novella, and I can see with the benefit of hindsight that I was merely skimming the surface of my subject matter. Michael helped me see the bigger (and much richer) story beneath the surface, and it was thanks to his questioning and probing that I found a way of diving deeper into my text and growing the manuscript into a proper novel.

Michael’s great editorial gift, I think, is his propensity to ask really useful questions: ‘Why did you use that image?’ ‘What was your thinking with that line of dialogue?’ ‘Why have you chosen to end the scene there?’ Michael’s curiosity helped me grow as a writer by forcing me to consciously confront my own (mostly subconscious) creative choices. This helped me to see my own writing through a reader’s eyes and made me consider my craft in a very sober and logical way – something which is very hard to do when you’re deep into your own text.

Of course, it also helps that as well as being an accomplished and highly regarded novelist, Michael is an incredibly warm, generous and supportive person – all fantastic traits in a mentor.

Escalator supports emerging writers from the East of England – and your book is set against the backdrop of Norwich’s football team. How do you feel this region has shaped your writing practice, or the book itself?

I moved to Norwich for two reasons. One was that I had grown up a Norwich fan in the West Country and was tired of having to travel so far to watch home games. And the second reason was that I knew about Norwich’s literary heritage, and I thought that coming here would bring me closer to my dreams of becoming a published literary novelist. It was in Norwich where – with the help of Escalator – I achieved that ambition, so in more ways than one, I can say that without Norwich there would have been no Season.

Most of Season is set in the stands of a fictionalised football ground in a beautiful, medieval city in the East of England. I never say it explicitly in the novel, but of course the setting is a version of Norwich – and it’s no coincidence that the unnamed football team at the heart of the book plays in a fetching shade of canary yellow. There’s an awful lot of Norwich in Season – and while you definitely don’t have to be from this part of the world to appreciate or enjoy the novel, I hope it will ring particularly true to locals.

As a writer working in the East, what are your thoughts on the specific opportunities and challenges for writers in this region?

I can’t speak for the East as a whole, but I can speak for Norwich. And as a writer, I can’t imagine a better or more exciting UK city to work in – which is probably why you can’t cross the road here without bumping into a writer of some description.

All of my friends who write fiction live in Norwich, and there are all sorts of professional, social and institutional support systems for young or up-and-coming writers in the city. I’m a rare breed in that I never studied at UEA, but obviously the university continues to attract writers from around the world. And when you fold in the National Centre for Writing – which has been, without a doubt, my biggest institutional champion – you can start to make out the contours of a landscape which is very favourable to writers.

The challenge for this region – and for every other – is that we’re not London. Publishing is an old industry with some old ways of doing things, and mainstream industry activity is still rooted very firmly in the capital. Until that changes, major publishers will continue to ignore – or at least mishear – new voices from beyond the M25. Thankfully, Escalator is there to shout extra loud for writers in our part of the world.

We’ve just announced the writers for Escalator 2025 and have ambitious plans afoot for the future of the programme. Based on your experience of Escalator, what words of motivation, insight or advice would you give to aspiring writers thinking about applying?

As easy and enjoyable as it may be to talk about writing, or think about writing, there is no substitute for actually doing the hard work. If you want to be a writer, sitting down at your desk and hammering out the words is a necessary evil, and the same goes for your Escalator application. Just get on with it. It’ll be worth it when you sign your first deal!

Finally, with arts funding facing significant cuts in recent years, what message would you share with those considering supporting the Escalator campaign or donating to the National Centre for Writing?

The great thing about Escalator is that it produces tangible outcomes. The whole point of the scheme is to accelerate the careers of promising writers from our part of the world, and its success can be judged against that aim.

Year after year, Escalator alumni have gone on to publish novels, with book deals emerging sooner or later from almost every cohort. You could already fill a small library with the works of writers who have passed through Dragon Hall – so if you want to support our national and regional culture, then Escalator will practically guarantee a return on your investment.

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