Commissions
Every year Durham Book Festival commissions new writing. See our Durham Book Festival 2025 commissions below and view our archive of commissions from previous years.
Eliza Clark: She’s Always Hungry
Celebrate She’s Always Hungry, the first short story collection from acclaimed North East writer Eliza Clark – a major voice in British fiction.
Unsettling, revelatory, and laced with her signature dark humour, Eliza Clark’s debut short story collection plumbs the depths of that most basic human feeling: hunger.
Durham Book Festival presents an exclusive dramatic live reading from She’s Always Hungry, followed by a Q&A with the author.
Rewriting v.: Malika Booker, Jo Clement and Paul Farley
Tony Harrison’s poem v. was written in 1984 during the Miners’ Strike and describes a visit to his parents’ graves which had been vandalised and covered in obscene graffiti. The poem explores class, alienation, anger and Northern identity. A televised performance made headlines and divided the nation due Harrison’s use of profanities.
Forty years on, Durham Book Festival and poet Andrew McMillan bring together three acclaimed Northern poets to re-imagine this seminal piece of public poetry and read from their newly commissioned poems.
Fiona Hill: Forged in the North
Forged in the North is a new podcast series from Fiona Hill, exploring how the North East has shaped the lives of successful people, from musical icon Sting and writers such as Lee Hall and Peter Straughan, to entrepreneur and former Dragon Sara Davies.
In this special event, Fiona will be speaking to authors L.J Ross and Richard O’Neill about how they tell the story of our region in their books and how the North East has forged them both.
The Little Read
This year’s Little Read is Help! We Need a Story, written by North East author James Harris and illustrated by Mariajo Illustrajo.
It’s a dull day in the jungle and Artie the macaque’s friends are BORED! But with paper, pens and ink, a splash of inspiration, and a pinch of imagination, Artie creates something magical… a book!
500 free copies of the book will be available in libraries around County Durham as part of the 2025 Little Read. Young readers and their families can also take part in a free Little Read Workshop with James Harris during October half term.
