The best Northern debut novelists of 2026
The best debut novelists of 2026 list from The Observer features 8 brilliant writers – but why does just one of them live and work outside London?
The talent of the selected writers is beyond question, but the list is wildly imbalanced, with 87% of the writers living in a city which is home to just 15% of the UK population.
Now more than ever, it is important that the stories we read, listen to, and watch, represent the rich diversity of human experience, which is why we’ve put together our own complementary list to the Observer’s – the best Northern debut novelists of 2026. Enjoy!
Heba Al-Wasity
Heba Al-Wasity was inspired to write by her own experiences of being born an Iraqi-refugee in Libya, growing up in Canada, and attending medical school in the UK. As a junior doctor, she has worked in emergency care and several psychiatric inpatient units, allowing her to gain first-hand insight in the ways that poverty and deprivation can lead to social inequalities. She is based in Greater Manchester.
Weavingshaw is a yearning, slow-burn gothic fantasy romance which follows a young woman haunted by the ghosts of her past. It was published by Bantam on 24 February.
Alys Cummings
Alys Cummings is a writer and journalist based on the north-east coast. She is an Emerging Creative Associate with New Writing North and a member of their North East Novelists group. As a producer and director, Alys has made documentaries for BBC Panorama on subjects including domestic abuse, the world of the UK’s conspiracy theorists, and avoidable deaths in maternity care. Her most recent film was shortlisted for Scoop of the Year at the British Journalist awards.
Murder Most Cryptic is her first novel, and won Pitch Perfect at the 2024 Bloody Scotland festival. It will be published by Michael Joseph on 18 October.
Stu Hennigan
Stu Hennigan is a writer, poet, editor, and musician based in Leeds. His acclaimed book, Ghost Signs: Poverty and the Pandemic, is a powerful, firsthand account of delivering essential food and medicine to some of the city’s most deprived communities during the early months of the COVID-19 lockdown. Published by Bluemoose Books, the book was shortlisted for Best Non-Fiction at the 2022 Books Are My Bag Awards and for Best Political Book by a Non-Parliamentarian at the 2023 Parliamentary Book Awards.
Stu’s debut novel Keshed is an unflinching character study exploring class, belonging, fatherhood and conflicting ideals of modern masculinity. It was published by Ortac Press on 12 February.
KL Kaine
Katja Kaine is a Yorkshire-based author of young adult fantasy stories with powerful, immersive narratives that fuse Asian-inspired worldbuilding, feminist themes, and pacey, high-stakes adventures. She has won multiple writing awards, including the TLC Northern Promise Award and the SCBWI Undiscovered Voices competition, and been shortlisted for the Bath Children’s Award and the Write Mentor Novel-In Development Award.
Blood of Gods and Girls is a Singapore-inspired feminist fantasy romance that centers around Nisha, who must win the respect of a matriarchal warrior and navigate her feelings for a holy man who represents those she hates. It will be published by Penguin on 2 July.
Rebecca Philipson
Rebecca Philipson grew up in a mining town in County Durham, where she still lives. Educated in a small convent, she set up her own business at 21 and won both the North East Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award and the Artemis Award for inspirational women in business. Rebecca was inspired to write How to Get Away with Murder after starting a True-Crime blog during the pandemic, and becoming fascinated by the ways in which serial killers are treated like celebrities.
How to Get Away with Murder follows a Scotland Yard detective trying to find the author of a self-help book that promises quite literally to teach readers how to get away with murder, which seems to have inspired London’s newest murderer. It was published by Bantam on 12 March.
Louise Powell
Louise Powell is an award-winning working-class writer and socially-engaged practitioner based in Middlesbrough. She works across forms, including prose, plays, podcasts, poetry, creative non-fiction and research projects. A domestically and internationally published scholar, she has a PhD in English from Sheffield Hallam University and has held a Greyhound Board of Great Britain Professional Greyhound Trainer’s Licence, and won the Sid Chaplin Award in 2023.
Underdogs is a an edge-of-your-seat, voice-driven novel set in the world of underground greyhound racing. ‘Telt’ in the County Durham dialect of this flapping community, it is a tale of family, community, and what it means to be a child in a very adult world. It will be published by JM Originals on 2 July.
Gab Torr
Gab Torr won a London Writers Award in 2021, and has been published with Cipher Press and longlisted for the 2023 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize. Gab lives in Sheffield with their wife and no pets.
Hard Place is an impeccable rendering of modern queer life. Through the story of Billy and her new flatmates who are unapologetically political and loudly queer, it shows the messy, human hypocrisy of existing in the current moment with brutality and tenderness. It will be published by Scribner on 4 June.
Shaun Wilson
Shaun Wilson was born and raised in Wigton, Cumbria. In 2021, an early draft of Malc’s Boy won a Northern Writers’ Award, with an excerpt published by Granta in 2024. His work featured in Kit de Waal’s working-class anthology Common People (Unbound, 2019. He holds a PhD in English and Creative Writing from Northumbria University and has worked as an Associate Lecturer in Creative Writing at the Universities of Northumbria and Teesside.
Malc’s Boy charts a son’s struggle and friendship with his father amidst a legacy of toxic masculinity and violence. It will be published by Conduit Books on 23 April.