John Dean – Crime Writer

Jerwood Fellowship recipients announced

New Writing North has announced that Kym Deyn, Katherine Horrex and J.A.Mensah have been selected as the recipients of the Jerwood Fellowships. The Fellowships support early career published writers of fiction, poetry and narrative non-fiction with a £10,000 cash bursary and a bespoke package of support and mentoring, funded by the Jerwood Foundation.

Kym Deyn is a poet and writer of weird fiction who moonlights variously as a tarot reader, a librarian, and the editor of The Braag CIC, a micro-press based in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. They have been widely published in anthologies and journals for their poetry and prose, have been shortlisted for awards including The Bridport Prize and recently came third in the 2025 Oxford Poetry Prize. Their debut poetry collection Folkish is published by Nine Arches.

Katherine Horrex’s first collection Growlery is published by Carcanet. It was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney First Collection Prize in 2021, and featured a poem called ‘Parliament, Fallen’, which was Highly Commended in the Forward Prizes Best Poem category.

Her poems have featured in a variety of publications, such as The Guardian,The Times Literary Supplement, The Poetry Review, and Poetry London. They have also been anthologised in The Forward Prizes Anthology 2021, and The Emma Press anthology Some Cannot Be Caught.

J.A. Mensah’s debut novel, Castles from Cobwebs, was nominated for the Desmond Elliott Prize and won the NorthBound Book Award. Her short stories have been published by Comma Press, New Writing North, Dead Ink and Bloomsbury. Her plays have been produced by companies including Pilot Theatre and Live Theatre, among others.