North-east readers! This will be great event – celebrating the launch of Louise Powell's excellent Underdogs. See you there!

Underdogs: Louise Powell - New Writing North

Join us to launch Northern Writers’ Award-winner Louise Powell’s debut novel, Underdogs – a love letter to a disappearing community....

newwritingnorth.com

Louise Powell is a socially-engaged writer embedded embedded in her family’s North East community, and with a cult-like following. Underdogs, published on 2 July and set in the world of unlicensed greyhound racing tracks, is her first novel, and it's everything we hoped. A working-class must-read.

In this live recording for the Working Class Library podcast Val McDermid will be talking to hosts @clairemalcolm.bsky.social and Richard Benson about the Scottish crime novel that most inspired her – William McIlvanney's Laidlaw. See you there! www.hexhambookfestival.co.uk/event/the-wo...

It took a while to digest Keshed by @stuhennigan.bsky.social , because it's such a big, powerful and important novel. Apart from anything else, it brings home how xlass works on you internally and externally, a combination of feeling and material conditions.

I sometimes wonder if, when someone finds an old coin, say a Roman one, are they first person to touch it since the last Roman person it? Is there a corresponding Roman person 2000 years ago going “Damn, I’ve lost that sodding aureus.”?

Threace@threace.org · last yr.

Man used a metal detector to search the same British farm field for 6 years before finding this Roman gold coin dating back to 69AD and believed to be the first of its kind found in Britain. www.goodnewsnetwork.org/76-year-old-...

Not enough books about darts. Thank you Kit Fielding, I’m going in 🎯

The Bee is hosting an online launch event for Chopsy, with @clairemalcolm, publisher of The Bee and CEO of New Writing North, in conversation with Maya Jordan, and questions from the audience to follow. The event takes place at 7.30pm on Wednesday 25 March 2026.

Growing up in a working-class family in Newcastle, David Olusoga experience devastating economic decline, and racism. Yet he "rejected his rejection", and has come to love his home region, as he explain in an essay in The Bee: thebeemagazine.com/david-olusog...

To write about working-class lives and working-class experience, many writers need to invent a working-class form and style. @dantyte.bsky.social, documenting life in his native South Wales, does just that, with taut, pared-back language that complements his characters’ focus on self-preservation.

Quite rightly singled out by the Observer as one of the best debuts of 2026 – an empathetic evocation of the experience of learning disability, and a brilliant new voice for non-gentrified east London. Read our interview with Lucy Apps here: thebeemagazine.com/lucy-apps-ou...

Our interview with the poptastic memoirist Adelle Stripe, who asked if we could begin with some Smash Hits type questions as well as literary ones is here: thebeemagazine.com/adelle-strip...

The difficulties with Starmer identifying as working class are obvious, but it’s interesting that the biggest objectors are clearly middle class right wing journalists. Most seems incapable of understanding you might base your identity on things other than job & money.

“Wuthering Heights is a story by and about people from below,” writes Richard Benson in a a short history of adaptations of the book. “Millions have identified with it as such for 150 years. Fennell's version takes the pretty bits, and made them into a film for people from above.” bit.ly/wh26x

“Wuthering Heights” Review: Problems Aren’t Only About Race and Class

The problem with Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights run deeper than its awful casting.

thebeemagazine.com

I love photography work in which the photographer makes themselves parrndo the story, rather than just being the detached eye

The New Yorker@newyorker.com · 7mo ago

Perms, hairspray and cigarettes—a snapshot of a 1980s salon-to-salon salesman’s day from the eyes of his feminist daughter. www.newyorker.com/culture/phot...

The documentary photography of working-class people that gets published tends to show people looking pitiable and/or threatening. We try to challenge that a bit, and Carmina Ripollés is one of the photographers who helps us. Here's her fabulous festive portfolio: thebeemagazine.com/when-were-sm...

When We’re Smiling

Do photographs of working-class people have to be sombre, serious and vaguely threatening? Not if Carmina Ripollès is taking the pictures, they don’t. Here’s her show of smiles from the past year to c...

thebeemagazine.com

Looking forward to columnists exploring further class-related statistical anomalies, such as employed working-class people having to claim benefits to cover basic living expenses.

Had a lot of fun working with Leesa Morris on this, a comic festive disaster story about a working-class woman's first Christmas with her fiancé's middle-class parents. Her observations of rituals and manners from sausage rolls eating to present opening are a yuletide delight 🐝🎄🐝🎄🐝🎄

How I Ruined a Middle-Class Christmas

Her family scoff sausage rolls, love a bit of tinsel, and open their presents when they get up. His eat tiny amounts of Thorntons, colour-co-ordinate, and – yes, we are in Hell – wait until after dinn...

thebeemagazine.com

Born in the Mon Valley, Phillip Bonosky transformed from a devout Catholic into a committed Communist writer, chronicling the struggles of working-class immigrants. Richard Gazarik tells his story. pghrev.com/phillip-bono...

Phillip Bonosky’s Fight for the Working Class - Pittsburgh Review of Books

Phillip Bonosky wanted to be a Catholic priest growing up during the Great Depression amid the slag heaps of a nearby steel mill in Duquesne, a gritty steel

pghrev.com

Anyone else noticing “canonical” replacing out “iconic” in ads? I have just watched an an advert for a canonical calendar.

The new episode of our Working Class Library podcast, in which Kevin Barry makes the case for Angela’s Ashes as a working class classic, is out now - on all platforms, and our site - see link here 🐝🐝

The Working Class Library Episode 6: Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

Kevin Barry joins Claire Malcolm, chief executive of New Writing North, and Richard Benson, editor of The Bee, to discuss Frank McCourt’s 1996 memoir Angela’s Ashes.

thebeemagazine.com

This doesn't sound good: www.thebookseller.com/news/waterst... (And it's already terrifying that such an important asset to the UK economy, cultural soft power and to generally making life better is owned by a US hedge-fund.)

Waterstones and Barnes & Noble owner 'looks to list them on stock market'

The owner of Waterstones and Barnes & Noble, a US hedge fund, is reportedly looking to list the booksellers on the stock market.

thebookseller.com

Just discovering Thomas Burke, a prolific early 20th c working class writer who joined London Bohemia, and then pointed out that most of the convention-challenging it was so proud of had been/was already being done by working-class Victorians decades earlier. Looking forward to reading more in 2026

Why IS Angela’s Ashes called Angela’s Ashes? Kevin Barry has a theory.

We recorded an episode of the Working Class Library podcast about Angela's Ashes at Hexham Book Festival with Kevin Barry. Kevin's a native of Limerick and his dad knew the McCourts. It was a great conversation & confirmed my belief that AA is an overlooked working-classic. Podcast coming Thursday

Gary Stevenson, author of Trading Game, was responding to Rory Stewart's claim that he was "not an economist", just "a City trader". Gary has a Master of Philosophy degree in Economics from Oxford University.

Quite so ,Mr Doyle

We're proud and excited to say our Working Class Library podcast episode about The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, featuring David Nicholls, is now available on all good podcast platforms, and on our site. We loved doing this, and hope you like it too 🐝

The Working Class Library Episode 5: The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾ by Sue Townsend

Richard and Claire are joined by novelist David Nicholls to consider Sue Townsend’s 1982 novel The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾.

thebeemagazine.com