Showcase

The Literary Consultancy is excited to be working on an innovative showcase for its writing talent, initially in association with Staple Magazine. See TLC Showcase Introduction for more on the inception of the Showcase and please see below for where it is now.

Once a month we will highlight the work of one author whose work we believe deserves a platform, whether simply because our readers felt it worth championing, or whether we have helped the writer on to commercial publication.

If you enjoy reading our Showcase, please feel free to share, and let us know on Facebook or on Twitter.

Ali Al-Jamri

“You ask me how I found myself mixed up between these weavers?

In a house in Rossendale, I lived the war of weavers:

In the manor of the handloom lord, I failed to see the pain

Of a worker who’d once lost himself to his profession’s strain.

I wish I’d caught my tongue—thought of my forebears in Bahrain!

Instead I said, “Who cares today? We’ve left behind these weavers.””

From Assorted Poems – included in the showcase 

“I’d been writing poetry since 2015, having turned to the form as I found it was a way for me to express a lot of my tumultuous feelings in my early twenties. But it took a long time before I considered myself a poet, rather than a dabbler. I received a review and feedback from some of my work with the TLC Free Read in 2021, and it was an important boost to understanding my own work, what I was trying to say and who I was responding to.” From the Introduction

Previous Showcase Authors

Merryl Futerman – TLC Showcase Author

Merryl Futerman

“Babe, its freezing. Can you get my parka? Such a straightforward request means I can turn over, keep dozing. This state of bliss lasts about a minute until I remember

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Jessica Zarins – TLC Showcase Author

Jessica Zarins

“She knows immediately after Nothing to Declare that he isn’t there. The air in the Arrivals hall isn’t any different from the plane or from Gatwick this morning. Thousands of

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Niraj Shukla – TLC Showcase Author

Niraj Shukla

“…The next station is Acton Town…Please mind the gap between the train and the platform…There are beggars and buskers operating on the train; please do not encourage their presence by

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David Shannon – TLC Showcase author

David Shannon

“Simple time keep people simple. This, that, be happy, be sad. Take books away, heads have less clutter. Take food away, everyone do as they is ask. Well, not everyone.

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Amanda Epe – TLC Showcase author

Amanda Epe

“Mama Coleman soothed Bessie’s sore feet, massaging them from the four-mile daily walk to school and back. It was a Friday evening and the miles had accumulated. The relaxing massage

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James Brophy – TLC Showcase author

James Brophy

“He was still on top of the hill, the same hill, except there were no buildings any longer. He noticed that the ground was wet in places. The sun had

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Eliza Vitri Handayani – TLC Showcase author

Eliza Vitri Handayani

“From Now On Everything Will Be Different tells the story of my generation. We grew up under the repressive New Order regime and learned to keep our mouth shut and

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Maggie Barrett – TLC Showcase author

Maggie Barrett

“Felicity sits at her desk, uncaps her pen, writes “Chapter 22’’ and stops. What is she trying to say? Not just now, in this minute, but altogether? What is this

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Jason Young – TLC Showcase author

Jason Young

“Joanna Bromley’ is a follow-up to my feature film script titled ‘The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano’. Joanna was the mixed-race daughter of Olaudah Equiano (aka. Gustavus Vassa) in 19th

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Sharon Duggal – TLC Showcase author

Sharon Duggal

“Jimmy Noone drifted, alone in a cold subway, falling away with the day as it faded to shadow. He dreamt of balloons: sky-blue, bought by his father to mark his

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Paul Crooks – TLC Showcase author

Paul Crooks

“I reach the St Johns Anglican church and as usual, all I can think about is death, especially when I catch sight of the stone wall and railings. I see

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Emma Cameron – TLC Showcase author

Emma Cameron

“Catrìona walked along the path beside the kirk carrying a bunch of spring flowers, passing the ancient yew tree, grooved and twisted, as old as time. Lifting the latch she

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Vince Laws – TLC Showcase author

Vince Laws

“Poet John Faust is suicidal. His benefits have been stopped without warning, the bailiffs are due to evict him, his dog is in the vets dying, his car needs a

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Steve Sabella – TLC Showcase author

Steve Sabella

“Let me take you back to 1996, when I sat alone in the back corner of Abu Shanab restaurant, a bustling hangout in the Old City. I was only twenty.

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Carl El Khoury – TLC Showcase author

Carl El Khoury

“It happened in flashes like a sequence of snapshots in a stop motion film because my mind blinked several times; blink — two hands on my chest shoving me to

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Pallavi Gopinath Aney – TLC Showcase author

Pallavi Gopinath Aney

“Every so often Mrs. Mehta dutifully waited to do her washing after Mrs. Chadha had finished hers and then emptied the frothy, soapy water in a happy whoosh over Mrs.

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Maggie Humm – TLC Showcase author

Maggie Humm

“Plucking a glass of champagne from a passing waiter, Lily was desperate for a cigarette, but none of the ladies were smoking. “Can you see my painting?” “There it is,

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Christopher Owen – TLC Showcase author

Christopher Owen

“None too bright in the head, that’s what they said of him, that’s what he thought they said, him standing there in the supermarket, on one foot and then the

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Pauline Walker – TLC Showcase author

Pauline Walker

“Some things you can see coming, like when sunlight fades, dusk falls, darkness rushes to pervade. It’s inevitable. Like Enoch’s rivers of blood, staining London streets in ’81, ’85, 2011;

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