Escalator Writing Fellowship 2024-2025: The Showcase.
July 2025
The Escalator Showcase: the culmination of 8 months of mentoring, intense writing sprits, many, many Whatsapp messages and voicenotes, and an in-person rehearsal. It was all leading us to this moment.
On a glorious July day, we Escalator Fellows were offered the space to share our projects with a room full of supportive literary minds, agents, friends and family. Ably hosted by The London Library, founded in 1841, and boasting members including Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Kazuo Ishiguro and (my favourite) Pre-Raphaelite muse Jane Morris, the staff at both the Library and our Escalator Programme team put us completely at ease and made us feel incredibly special. Not to mention the encouragement and generous introductions from our incredibly inspiring mentors, before we got up to read from our works-in-progress, nestled amongst the miles of bookcases and twinkling fairy-lights.
Though naturally nervous to speak in front of a room full of people, I found delivering my reading to be an absolute joy. And listening to my fellow writers’ pieces was even more so. I can’t thank the National Centre for Writing enough for including me in their 2024-2025 Escalator cohort – and for the regular reminders that this is only the very beginning of our writing journey…
Liv Hewkin 