Local Writers Showcase

14 October 2026

Ahead of the main Margate Bookie weekend, our annual Local Writers Showcase puts a variety of writers from Thanet’s vibrant literature scene on stage to perform excerpts of their latest work at ARK in Cliftonville.

​A celebration of the immense talent working in the area, it’s an opportunity to hear from emerging and established writers working across a variety of genres.

Performers include:

  • Carol Cooper

  • Chris Horn

  • Fiona Rose

  • Jay Remmick

  • Poppy Cockburn

  • Stephen Miller

  • Steven Quincey-Jones

  • Tara Crowe

  • Vanessa Bennett

Book now

About the authors

Carol Cooper
Carol is a Margate-based journalist and writer. She’s written comedy sketches for the Edinburgh Fringe, has had plays on in London theatres including The Arcola, Greenwich Theatre and Southwark Playhouse, plus podcasts and short films produced, including Happy Now starring Anna Wilson Jones.

As playwright/producer Carol’s recent hits include Crabaret, at Margate’s Crab Museum and the future-themed CabarAI at Margate’s Roslyn Court. And as part of POW Festival; That Sinking Feeling at The Lido and Twisted Sisters at The Sarah Thorne Theatre, Broadstairs.

As Features Editor for shots magazine, she seeks out cool content on the creative side of advertising and has interviewed such film and adland legends as Rankin, Frank Budgen, Luke Scott and Michael Gracey. Previous journalistic roles have included writing film and TV reviews for titles ranging from Nuts to The Radio Times.

Chris Horn
Chris Horn started writing in 2000 with his first children's book The Word Spider published in 2001. Since then he has written six more books in the series, with more characters and amazing places across the world of the word spider.

Chris is now writing adult thrillers with his co author Jay Remmick, with their first book 25 Bridges coming later this year.

25 short stories set round the bridges of the River Thames. From Kew to Tower Bridge, each story delves into the darkness of human depravity, how far someone would go to protect their family, to bury secrets or act out for revenge.

Alongside writing Chris is a huge supporter of local indie authors, and runs the Pop-Up Bookshop and associated events in the Thanet area, helping to promote authors and their works.

Fiona Rose
Fiona Rose loves having two places to call home, Thanet and Glasgow and is fiercely proud of her working‑class roots, where the baby dyke in her grew and flourished over nearly five decades.

Many moons ago, she was crowned Young Scottish Playwright of the Year for her first play, Reflections. Since then, she’s threaded her stage work: performing, directing and writing, through a career in public health.

She’s now shaping an anthology of her poems, currently titled Defiance.

Jay Remmick
Jay Remmick is a writer and editor of horror and dark fiction, and the editor behind Red Raven Books. He likes horror with a strong hook, a good story and an ending that he continues thinking about afterwards, whether that means monsters, ghosts, folk horror, body horror, cosmic dread or something altogether harder to classify. His own fiction appears alongside the work of other writers in Mixed Bag, an anthology series built around a simple idea: horror comes in many different flavours, so why settle for just one?

Poppy Cockburn
Poppy Cockburn (pronounced co-burn) is a writer based in Margate. Her debut poetry book, Naked Oyster, was published by If a Leaf Falls Press in 2025 and commended for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Her second full-length collection, Every time I meet you feels like doom, is out now with SARKA

Stephen Miller
Stephen will be reading an extract from his yet-to-be published science fiction novel, Liberty.

Set in the near future, the novel centres on the experiences of Peter Stein, a gifted data scientist mourning the death of his wife, Liberty. When an invitation arrives to work at Nyx, a luxurious smart city being built underground, he seizes it as an opportunity to escape both his grief and the political turmoil above ground. However, as the world above slowly deteriorates, so too does life within Nyx.

Stephen's writing draws inspiration from his career as a social researcher, having extensively studied what does and doesn’t make a coherent, cohesive community, and how technology and the climate crisis are changing this. He lives in Margate with his partner, and is also Chair of Ark, Cliftonville's Cultural Space.

Steven Quincey-Jones
Steven Quincey-Jones is a teacher and children's author. He enjoys writing fishy fables about our relationship with our ever-shifting coastlines and seascapes. His first novel, Fishfolk, is set 8,000 years ago in Doggerland, the vanished archipelago that once existed in the middle of the North Sea. It's also about Brexit and climate change, but we don't need to lumber the children with that just yet.

On the night I'll be reading from Fishfolk, which tells the story of the last inhabitants of Doggerland as they attempt to escape bith the tide, and a nefarious race of shape-shifting sea beasts, i.e. the fishfolk themselves.

Tara Crowe
Tara spent her childhood with her nose buried in a book and loves all types of fiction, from historical epics to futuristic dystopia, devouring anything that transports her to another world.

After university, she spent a decade in publishing sales at The Guardian and New Scientist before moving into early years education, where she taught phonics using storytelling, puppets, and a fair amount of enthusiastic (if questionable) singing.

More recently, Tara worked at Ingenious, a company making collagen supplements. She was fascinated by the increasingly clever ways science can trick our bodies into looking and feeling younger, and the inspiration for her novel Little Mice came from a news segment about young blood plasma being used to rejuvenate older people – a concept she found both intriguing and unsettling. The idea lingered: What happens when youth itself becomes a commodity?

Little Mice is Tara’s debut novel, and she is currently working on a sequel. She lives in Margate and South London with her husband, teenage children, an adventurous cat, and a spectacularly lazy dog.

Vanessa Greenthorpe
Born in Margate, Vanessa can usually be found wandering or swimming along the beautiful coastline where she grew up. Whilst excited by the new influx of settlers and the creative community that has blossomed here, she would be happy never to overhear the words ‘Turner Skies’ again. A teacher of English and creative writing, Vanessa has contributed to local lifestyle publications as a restaurant and hotel reviewer, a job that has had its own delicious rewards.

Vanessa deals with themes of ‘the other’ in her writing, the darker corners of psychology that often remain hidden by the daily mask we present to the world. Her work explores how stereotypes of mental illness are presented, considering that our place in time and history can change both its manifestations and how society treats those it might once have deemed to be a saint, or insane. Vanessa depicts her characters as ordinary people experiencing extraordinary events, and keeps humour and empathy at the heart of her work.

Her latest novel is battling in the trenches of final drafts and is entitled ‘Digna Vox’,Voice of God, which could be described as ‘Joan of Arc’ meets ‘Rachel’s Holiday’. Two girls, two centuries, one voice; which unfortunately, only they can hear.