A 91-year-old author with over 90 books to her name, an author who’s lived in the same Ealing flat for 40 years and a writer envisaging Donald Trump behind bars were among the local authors who took to the Ealing Book Festival stage on 25 April 2025 in a high-speed pitching event.
The Local Authors Showcase, in Soane’s Kitchen at Pitzhanger Manor, was bigger than ever this year, as 20 writers from all genres – compared to 18 in 2024 – were given two minutes to ‘pitch’ their book to a capacity crowd, and hopefully persuade audience members to add a copy to their bookshelves.
The evening, hosted by Capital Xtra’s early breakfast presenter Jojo Silva – who is a huge advocate for reading, especially among younger age groups – included pitches for children’s books, crime fiction, non-fiction, dark comedy, poetry and historical drama inspired by true events.
Among those taking part in the event were Veronica Heley, a 91-year-old writer of cosy crime mysteries featuring such characters as Ellie Quicke and Bea Abbot. Her book Murder For Profit, which she pitched to the crowd, sees Ellie spring into action when a student falls to his death from a property owned by her housing charity.
We also heard from children’s authors including Lucy Lock, Cliff Martin and Mariesa Dulak, while writer Lucien Young gave us his pitch of Trump: The Prison Diaries, a fictionalised first-person account of swapping the White House for the Big House – written before Trump was voted in as president for a second term.
Meanwhile Cathie Wallace spoke about her book Orchard Stories, a biography of the block in flats in Ealing where she has lived for 30 years, first-time author CR Westbrook pitched her recently-released debut Troublemaker, a dark comedy-revenge-thriller with a romcom twist about a journalist who is tormented by a mysterious new colleague.
The line-up was completed with poetry, short stories and historical drama – with the former including pitches from Simon Piesse and his collection Colombianismos, and the latter seeing Nicola Rayner take to the stage to tell us about her recently published third novel The Paris Dancer. The book, about a Jewish ballroom dancer who worked for the Resistance during World War II while keeping her true identity a secret, is inspired by true events.
