Meet The Writers

Elte Rauch is a writer, translator, commissioning editor and publisher of The New Menard Press. She grew up in the Netherlands and first moved to the UK when she was eighteen, and Britain remains her spiritual home. In the Netherlands, she works as a project manager for the Arts Department at Amsterdam University Medical Centre.

 

In 2023, her debut novel, A Woman with Beautiful Breasts – The Diary of Veere Wachter, was published by Cossee Publishing in Amsterdam. Her latest novel, Johan, is being published there simultaneously with this book in the UK. In her writing, Rauch recognises and addresses the often missed or minimised emotional tangles and dramas that occur during periods of significant mental and physical challenge, as life in all its dimensions goes on irrespective.

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Instagram: @Elte_Rauch

Read My World: Elte Rauch

The New Menard Press: About

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) is among the great literary geniuses and is still recognised as one of the most innovative English writers of the twentieth century.

 

Perhaps best known as the author of the novels Mrs Dalloway, Orlando and To the Lighthouse, she was also a prolific writer of essays, diaries, letters and biographies. Her work is still widely read and studied and a variety of artistic, literary and feminist initiatives and awards are named after her.

Lina Scheynius is a photographer known for her distinct, diaristic style. Her work captures moments of intimacy and hidden beauty, from nudes to still lifes and self-portraits. At times luminous, then hazy – always intense and thought-provoking – her images convey sensual experience with unflinching authenticity.

 

Scheynius’s work has been shown in solo exhibitions in Zurich, Tokyo, Oslo, Berlin and London, and in group exhibitions at institutions including House of Photography, Hamburg; Centre de la photographie, Geneva; Somerset House, London; and the Foam Museum, Amsterdam. She previously wrote a weekly photography column for Die Zeit, has published nineteen photobooks and is the author of Diary of an Ending (Prototype Publishing).

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Website: www.linascheynius.com

Substack: Year of Love

Instagram: linascheynius

Photography: Photobooks

Further writing: Diary of an Ending

Jameisha Prescod is an artist-filmmaker, writer and journalist f rom South London. Their writing and visual work explore how disability and illness intersect with history, culture, colonialism and identity. Jameisha’s work is grounded in a research-based practice that weaves intimate personal testimony with wider socio-political themes.

 

Their essays have been published in anthologies alongside Virginia Woolf, Audre Lorde and Sinéad Gleeson, and their photographic work won the Wellcome Photography Prize in 2021. Jameisha is also the founder of You Look Okay to Me, a creative media company and online space for chronic illness.

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Instagram: You Look Okay to Me​

Profile: Forbes 30 Under 30

Digital Residency: Vital Capacities

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Image: Joe Dixey

Eva Meijer is a philosopher, visual artist, writer and singer-songwriter. Meijer wrote over twenty books, including novels, philosophical essays, academic texts, and poetry. Their work has been translated into over twenty languages. Recurring themes are language and silence, madness and illness, nonhuman animals and nature, and politics and democracy.

 

Meijer also writes essays and columns for Dutch newspapers, is a member of the Multispecies Collective (a multispecies art collective) and De Vereniging ter Bevordering van Troost (The Association for the Promotion of Consolation).

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Website: www.evameijer.nl

Music: Eva Meijer

Publications: Eva Meijer

Blog: Eva Meijer
Photography: Eva Meijer
Future Events: Eva Meijer

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Image: ​​Martijn Gijsbertsen

Ted Monroe is a writer and English teacher based in London. Having contracted Long Covid in 2022, he has since turned to writing that blends memoir, humour and literary criticism to make sense of the seismic life changes that have come with chronic illness.

 

He has published in The Fence and The Mortar. He is currently working on his first book, which explores the intersections between illness, literature and art. This is also the subject of his Substack, The Art of Convalescence.

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Substack: The Art of Convalescence

Instagram: Art of Convalescence

Alvina Chamberland is a Swedish-US American author of predominantly literary autofiction novels. After publishing two books in Swedish, she made her English-language debut with Love the World or Get Killed Trying (2024), a trans female take on the travelling-alone genre, probing questions of eternity, sexuality, longing, death and love, as well as how difficult it is to remain soft when one is the target of straight men’s too often hidden lust and open disgust.

 

It was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and was listed by the Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company as one of the ‘121 Best Books of the 21st Century’.

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Instagram: alvinachamberland

Novel: Love The World or Get Killed Trying

Book Launch film: Love The World or Get Killed Trying 

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Image: Asterianna 

Kathryn Maris is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently The House With Only An Attic And A Basement.

 

Her poems have appeared in Penguin Modern Poets 5, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, The Forward Prize Anthology and many periodicals in the US and the UK. She also writes essays and reviews, and is Poetry Editor of afm.

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​Instagram: kooxiekyrie

Poetry Foundation: Kathryn Maris

The Royal Literary Fund: Kathryn Maris

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Image: Caroline Deruas

Mina Holland is a writer and editor, mostly about food and drink. She spent twelve years as an editor at the Guardian, working across all its food sections, most recently Feast, and during that time wrote two cookery books.

 

In an unplanned move away from food, her latest book, Lifeblood: A Mother in Search of Hope, is a memoir about her path to accepting a version of motherhood she had never imagined. She now regularly contributes to the Guardian, the Observer, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Toast, and is an occasional restaurant advisor.

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Substack: Welcome to Nibbles
Vogue: How Far I Went To Cure My Daughter’s Rare Illness

Instagram: Mina Holland

Observer: ‘I don’t think I can do it’: Mina Holland on mothering a seriously ill child

Nafissa Thompson-Spires is the author of the award-winning, National Book Award longlisted short story collection, Heads of the Colored People.

 

She earned a doctorate in English from ­­­­Vanderbilt University and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from ­­­­­­the University of Illinois. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in The Paris Review Daily, New York Magazine’s “The Cut,” The Root, The White Review, Ploughshares, 400 Souls: A Community History of African America 1619-2019, and The 1619 Project, among other publications.

 

In addition to a debut novel with Scribner, The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Rich Milford, her young adult debut is forthcoming with Make Me a World (Penguin Random House). She is a recipient of a 2024 United States Artists Grant and a 2019 Whiting Award.

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Website: www.nafissathompsonspires.com​

Instagram: nafissa.thompson.spires

The Guardian: ‘I wanted to see more stories about nerdy black people’

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Image: Miranda Barnes

Daisy Lafarge is a writer based in Glasgow. She is the author of the novel Paul (Granta 2021), which won a Betty Trask Award and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and the poetry collection Life Without Air (Granta 2020), which was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and awarded Scottish Poetry Book of the Year.

 

Lovebug, a book on the poetics of infection, was published in 2023. Her second novel is forthcoming in 2027.

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Website: www.daisylafarge.com
Instagram: daisylafarge

The Guardian: ‘Pain is a violent lover’: Daisy Lafarge on the paintings she made when floored with agony

Jude Cook is the author of the novels Byron Easy (2013) and Jacob’s Advice (2020). He reviews fiction for The Guardian, The Spectator, Literary Review, the tls, and his short fiction has appeared in The Moth, Tamarind and The Tangerine. He is an Associate Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Westminster, and in 2025 was a judge for the Republic of Consciousness Prize for small presses.

 

In the same year, he launched a new press, Conduit Books, spotlighting working-class voices and overlooked regional writing, focusing initially on male authors.

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Website: Conduit Books
Instagram: judecookwriter

Substack: Overcooked
 

Nikki Dekker is a novelist and essayist. Her debut novel, diepdiepblauw (deepdeepblue, 2022), was awarded the C.C.S. Crone Stipendium, nominated for the Boon and Bronzen Uil, and earned her the title of de Volkskrant Literary Talent of the Year (2023). Her second book, Graafdier (Under Our Feet, 2024), was nominated for the Jan Hanlo Essay Prize and the Dutch Prize for Nature Writing (2025).

 

In autumn 2026, her children’s non- fiction book, Wie zegt dat orka’s zwart-wit zijn? (Who Says Orcas Are Black and White?), will be published. Nikki is an editor of the literary magazine Tirade and writes columns and essays for various publications.

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Writers Unlimited: Nikki Dekker

Instagram: deleukenikki
Cela Europe: Nikki Dekker

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Image: Laura Cnossen

Jess Cawdron is a poet and essayist based in South London. Formerly a teacher, she now works as a speechwriter in the charity sector. ‘Notes on Psychosis’ is her first published work, selected f rom The New Menard Press open call for submissions.

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Copywriting: Jess Cawdron