Pondweed

Winner of the 2025 VS Pritchett Short Story Prize, The Guardian’s National Short Story Prize and the 2020 Arnold Bennett prize, Lisa Blower is a highly acclaimed novelist, playwright, short story fanatic, and advocate for the regional voice. A voracious reader who was given an adult library card from Hanley City library aged six, she’s been hailed by Kit De Waal as the – “natural heir to Arnold Bennett” – and often pays homage to The Potteries where she grew up.

Her work has appeared on BBC Radio 4, in the New Welsh Review, The Simple Things, Comma press, Oh Magazine, The Big Issue amongst others, and she was a contributor to the anthologies ‘Common People‘ (Unbound, 2019) and ‘Spake’ (Nine Arches Press, 2019) which celebrate the regional voice and being working-class.

She was the first writer in residence at Shrewsbury Museum & Art Gallery where she completed ‘Green Blind’ – a reimagining of Mary Webb’s ‘Gone to Earth’ – and is currently working on her third novel, ‘The Mongrels’. Her play ‘The Miner Birds’ – working with the North Staffs Miners’ Wives Action Group as part of the 40year commemorations of the Miners’ Strike was performed at The New Vic Theatre in July 2024 and will be repeated in March 2025.

Lisa holds a PhD from Bangor University in Creative & Critical Writing where she taught for 9 years. She lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Keele where she has launched the Arts council funded project: Restoking the Potteries Narrative: 100 Books in a 100 Years.