11 Children’s writers join Penguin’s WriteNow programme 

Tara Girvan has loved reading from a very young age and, after enjoying many bedtime tales with her two daughters, began writing her own stories. Tara is passionate about storytelling and inspiring children’s imaginations in fun and creative ways. She has also volunteered at a local primary school to help children develop their reading skills. Tara enjoys travelling and takes a keen interest in the natural world around her. She finds beauty in the tiniest of details, and often, it’s those details that can spark an amazing story or character idea. The Big Bad Fairy Tale Race is a humorous picture book about a mischievous Wolf challenged to a race by the Three Little Pigs. If Wolf loses, he must leave their fairy tale wood forever, but Wolf has a cunning plan to cheat his way to the finish line.

Simone grew up in rural Cumbria and now lives in South Wales, in a village apparently so miserable the Manic Street Preachers wrote a song about it (it’s actually quite pleasant). She’s learning Welsh, but has trouble pronouncing y llyfr yn y llyfrgell.

She’s been scribbling stories into notebooks since her childhood, but no one ever suggested she could be an author and it took an embarrassing amount of decades to work it out herself. When she eventually twigged, she quit her teaching job to pursue writing, plus a medley of day jobs.

She writes children’s fiction, where often dark, always quirky humour has a habit of seeping into her stories. She was selected for Literature Wales’s Representing Wales 2022, and is delighted to be chosen for Penguin’s WriteNow 2026. Simone is also an award-winning screenwriter.

Som's grandfather was a forest ranger in India and the most extraordinary storyteller she has ever known. He wove magical tales that held them spellbound, drawing from his experiences in the jungle and his love of reading. He was her hero, and her childhood dream was to be a storyteller too, but life took her in a different direction. She spent twenty years as a strategy consultant working with FTSE 100 executive teams, where she became known for bringing creativity, warmth and humour to her clients, earning the affectionate nickname of the "CBBC presenter of strategy." Last year she finally plucked up the courage to follow her heart. She scaled back her day job, wrote four picture books, and has since read them to nearly 1,000 children across school visits. She has never been as happy — and she cannot wait to see where this journey goes next!

Hayley King is a writer and teacher based in the North of England. She writes gothic murder mysteries for middle-grade children. The first in her family to go to university, Hayley has an MA in Victorian Literature and began writing upon the arrival of her own children. After teaching in primary schools for nearly twenty years, Hayley fell in love with creating dark, mysterious tales. Addicted to The Famous Five mysteries and Point Horror books from an early age, her writing merges these genres. She believes there is nothing more powerful than a child finding the right book at the right time. Hayley started studying the craft of writing ten years ago and used writing competitions as a way to build her confidence. Her work has been listed with New Writing North, Stockholm Writers Festival and Jericho Writers First 500.

MJ McVeigh is a children’s picture book writer from Derry, Northern Ireland. She has spent over a decade working in the humanitarian aid and development sector, a career that has taken her to refugee camps and community spaces across Europe, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. Telling stories in emergency settings has been one of the most rewarding parts of her work and, arguably, the best training a picture book writer could ask for. Children have always been generous enough to let her know if she is taking too long to get to the good bit. A proud member of the LGBT community, MJ writes the kind of diverse books she wishes had been around when she was growing up. Her stories are funny, full of fast-paced rhyme, and have a particular soft spot for messers.

A former journalist who has worked in the UK and South Korea, Claire Mi-Son has always loved writing. However, it wasn’t until lockdown that she tried her hand at creative writing, starting with picture books. Since then, she has completed a middle-grade book and a YA book and has continued to develop her writing craft. She has placed in several competitions, which has given her a great confidence boost. Perhaps the most rewarding thing she has taken from her writing journey is the community she has become part of and the amazing friends she has made along the way.

Hương Nguyễn is a Vietnamese author and mother of two young daughters who love books almost as much as they love ice cream. Inspired by their endless enthusiasm for picture books, Hương began dreaming of one day reading stories she had written herself to her children. With a background in education, Hương previously worked as a lecturer in Vietnam, teaching Vietnamese to international students. She believes teaching and writing have much in common: both are ways of sharing ideas, stories, and messages with others. Writing, however, comes with more imagination, fewer lesson plans, less discipline and considerably more fun. These days, Hương balances work at a café and family life during the day, reserving her late nights for writing and illustrating picture books for young readers.

Recently, however, writing has become a competition. Anna, her seven-year-old daughter has started creating books of her own – though she insists they're for adults, not children.

Betsy Nicholas is a children's writer born and raised in Northern Ireland, of Indian heritage. After trying her hand at short fiction, poetry and picture books, she found her home in middle grade and is currently developing her debut novel, Wilde - a transatlantic eco-fantasy about a boy who receives messages from the mother he believed was long gone, leading him across the world to an ancient forest holding the truth about his past, and the discovery that some things are far too precious to possess. She works in the charity sector and lives in London with her son, whose big imagination reminds her daily why children's books matter. Her work explores identity, belonging and our relationship with the natural world, inspired by her belief in the power of children's stories to spark curiosity, wonder and connection.

A former journalist, Guy spent several years writing for newspapers and magazines before retraining as a primary school teacher. This career change came with an in-built crash course on what makes young readers tick, and Guy's middle-grade book, Diary of the Chosen One's Brother, is inspired by his work with these children as well as his upbringing in South Wales.  It introduces Alfie and Ben Anderson, two very different identical twins who are getting ready to start Year 7. Alfie, who has had a lifetime of trips to the headteacher's office, is nervous but knows that he can always depend on his reliable brother to keep an eye out for him. Until, that is, Ben discovers that he's a wizard. A cheeky, first-person satire of the magical ‘chosen one’ trope, the story considers what happens to the siblings who don’t get into magic school. 

Hillary Smith is a queer writer originally from the US Pacific Northwest, where she grew up telling adults to stop talking to her because she was busy imagining stories. Following work in environmental communications, she completed the University of East Anglia's Prose Fiction MA and now lives with her wife in Edinburgh, tooting punk saxophone and working in the arts. Writing across fiction, poetry, and comedy, she's been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and longlisted for Moniack Mhor's 2026 Emerging Writer Award, among others. Two Goats and an Enormous Blue is a contemporary middle-grade novel following Lia, whose grey life with her grieving dad in the Highlands is upended by new American girl Kathleen. Lia isn't sure about some things (like PB&J, and their dogged search for some mythical loch lady), but Kathleen sets her on a journey of openness, imagination, and budding queer feelings—until secrets, bullies, and environmental disaster threaten it all.