Shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, ISDAL is the much-anticipated poetry collection from acclaimed novelist Susannah Dickey, which explores our cultural obsession with True Crime. Following the co-presenters of a podcast about the mystery of the ‘Isdal Woman’, whose burnt remains were discovered in Norway in 1970 and who has never been identified. It’s vivid, witty, and at the centre of the book is a philosophical enquiry into our perennial obsession with female victims, sexiness, and death. 

Susannah will be reading from her debut collection and discussing her work with award-winning writer Will Harris.

About our guests: 

Susannah Dickey is a poet and novelist from Derry; the author of the novels Tennis Lessons (2020) and Common Decency (2022), both published by Doubleday UK, and four poetry pamphlets, I had some very slight concerns (2017), genuine human values (2018), bloodthirsty for marriage (2020), and Oh! (2022) from Lifeboat Press in Belfast. Susannah is an Eric Gregory Award winner, a prize granted for a collection by poets under the age of 30. Her poems have been published in the TLS, Poetry London and Poetry Ireland Review, and her short fiction in The Dublin Review and The White Review. In 2019 she won the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize, and in 2021 she was longlisted for the Sunday Times Short Story Award. 

Will Harris is a London-based writer. His debut poetry book RENDANG (2020) was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. He co-edited the Spring 2020 issue of The Poetry Review with Mary Jean Chan. He has collaborated with the artist Aisha Farr, and helps facilitate the Southbank New Poets Collective with Vanessa Kisuule. He co-translated Habib Tengour’s Consolatio with Delaina Haslam in 2022. He is currently a Visiting Poetry Fellow at UEA working towards a community-led archive of four poets’ work. His second book of poems, Brother Poem (2023), is published by Granta.