House of Books & Friends is excited to welcome Rozie Kelly to the store on 16th April at 6pm to discuss her book, Kingfisher, which has just been longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2026.

As well as a discussion on her book, there will also be a Q&A, plus the chance to get your books signed by Rozie. Rozie will be in conversation with Sara Hunt, publisher at Saraband.

About the book

She smelled like jasmine. No, not exactly. She smelled like the earth beneath a jasmine plant on a hot day.

“Most of us are poets”, she said. “It’s just a question of how it comes out.”

When a creative writing academic becomes infatuated with his colleague – the poet – it is not long before it begins to threaten his relationship with his partner, Michael. Michael is beautiful. Michael is safe. But the poet is everything he isn’t; she has everything he wants.

While he writes about steel and sex, she dreams about the movements of swallows. While he tends to his budding career, she writes from her big, white house in the woods. As he slips between his old life and this new one, his fixation grows into something more powerful. The poet, his Kingfisher, is his sole focus. He is hypnotised.

But when simultaneous illnesses threaten to destroy the precarious reality he clings to, he’s forced to question what he can and cannot take from someone. This is a novel about grief, power and desire – and the tangles in between that make up a life.

About the Author

Rozie Kelly is a novelist based in West Yorkshire. After reading English Literature and Creative Writing she moved to Hebden Bridge, where she works for the Arvon Foundation, hosting creative writing courses. She was shortlisted for the PFD Queer Fiction Prize 2023 and was one of the eight participants in the inaugural Prototype Development Programme 2024. She won the 2024 NorthBound Book Award for Kingfisher, her debut novel, and this has now been longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2026.