We are delighted to welcome award-winning authors Jenny Colgan and Lucy Mangan to close the first day of the Festival, with a special conversation discussing the authors who have inspired their own bookish habits, and the joy of discovering hidden gems and lost voices in women’s fiction. This event is in partnership with Penguin Michael Joseph, celebrating 90 years of bestselling publishing with the launch of their new Mermaid Collection.
The Mermaid Collection features unjustly neglected works of popular mid-to-late-twentieth-century novels written by women who address issues that remain relevant today, akin to PMJ’s ongoing heritage of championing quality commercial women’s fiction and bringing it to the masses. Each Mermaid is introduced by a contemporary writer, reflecting on the author and book’s importance to the world in which it was published and why the book still feels like a fresh read in 2025.
The 4 titles in the collection’s inaugural tranche are:
📖 Down Among the Women by Fay Weldon, introduced by Jenny Colgan
📖 Lucy Carmichael by Margaret Kennedy, introduced by Lucy Mangan
📖 Through a Glass, Darkly by Helen McCloy, introduced by Gillian McAllister
📖 Fenny by Lettice Cooper, introduced by Jennie Godfrey
Jenny Colgan is the author of numerous Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling novels and has won various awards for her writing, including the Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance, the RNA Romantic Novel of the Year Award and the RNA Romantic Comedy Novel of the Year Award. Her books have sold more than fifteen million copies worldwide and have been published in 36 territories, and in 2015 she was inducted into the Love Stories Hall of Fame. Jenny is married with three children and lives in Scotland.
Lucy Mangan is a journalist and columnist. She spent two years training as a solicitor but left as soon as she qualified and went to work much more happily in a bookshop instead. She got a work experience placement at the Guardian in 2003 and hung around until they gave her a job. Lucy is now TV critic at the Guardian, and a columnist for The i newspaper. She has written for most of the major women's magazines, including Grazia, Cosmopolitan, and Stylist. Bookish, a sequel to her 2018 memoir, Bookworm, was published March 2025 by Vintage. Lucy Mangan is represented by Juliet Pickering at Blake Friedman.
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