Martine Oborne and Karen Liebreich To Join Local Authors' Showcase
Event will once again open the Chiswick Book Festival
A montage of book covers from participating authors. Picture: Chiswick Book Festival
August 30, 2026
The Chiswick Book Festival’s Local Authors' Showcase returns on Wednesday 9 September — and two familiar Chiswick names will be among the 20 writers taking to the stage. The Rev Martine Oborne, vicar of St Michael’s Church on Elmwood Road, and Karen Liebreich, founder of the gardens charity Abundance London, have both been announced for the 2026 line-up.
The Showcase, which traditionally opens the Festival, will once again take place at the George IV on Chiswick High Road. This year it will be hosted by a new presenter, Capital Xtra DJ Jojo Silva, who will guide the audience through the Festival’s trademark two-minute lightning talks. Tickets are now on sale.
They join an eclectic group of writers, including Rowan Hooper, podcast editor at New Scientist; Pablo Lloyd, author of the Financial Times Guide to Business Ethics; historian Sue Elliott, whose latest book explores the secrets of Trent Park House; and Sir Robert Lechler, Professor Emeritus at King’s College London. Two novelists recently featured on ChiswickW4.com — Dan Batchelor and Rebecca Thornton — will also be speaking.
Martine Oborne will introduce her debut novel The Trials of Jessica Lovegood, in which a female vicar — undermined by a bishop who doesn’t believe women should be priests — discovers she has an extraordinary gift of healing. What begins as a blessing soon becomes a burden.
Rebecca Thornton, writing as RJ Heber, brings Faculty of Liars, a sharp, unsettling story set inside an elite New England institution where prestige rules and secrets are traded like currency.
Former theatre director SJ Thomsett returns with The Angry Widow, a crime novel exploring the aftermath of a shocking killing through the eyes of those closest to it.
Actor Tim Marriott sets his new novel Revelation on the island of Patmos, weaving a modern tale of reflection and change. And Nick Bromley, associate director of the Tabard Theatre, offers Cry Havoc, a darkly comic adventure beginning on New Year’s Eve 1919, when a young British soldier encounters a Mephistophelean officer in post-war Germany.
Chiswick’s own Alwyn Hamilton, bestselling author of Rebel of the Sands, will present her latest YA fantasy thriller The Notorious Virtues.
Primary schoolteacher Dan Batchelor introduces Jack Palmer II: The Resistance, the second instalment of his sci-fi trilogy about a boy caught in an alien invasion.
Librarian Mariesa Dulak brings The Ice Cream Crocodile, a rhyming circus adventure celebrating difference and kindness.
Actor and producer Matt Barber will give the first public reading of his forthcoming children’s book Nora the Nerdie Neanderthal.
Historian Sue Elliott draws on her long fascination with Trent Park House for A Century of Secrets, charting its hidden past.
Hillie Marshall — radiographer, singer, pantomime performer and relationship counsellor — shares Playing Cupid, her memoir of running a dating agency.
Jack Waddington’s I’m on a Journey to See You, Sam is a moving diary addressed to the brother he lost to Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
And Sir Robert Lechler’s Restoring La Casa Rotta recounts the joys and challenges of rescuing a ruined farmhouse in Umbria.
Karen Liebreich will speak about Chiswick Fruit Timeline: A History in Apples and Pears, tracing the area’s horticultural heritage from early orchard culture to globally influential fruit varieties.
Rowan Hooper’s Togetherness explores cooperation in nature, described by reviewers as “a stunning portrait of collaboration”.
Disability-inclusion campaigner Natalie Hay presents The Parent Carer, a guide for families raising children with additional needs.
Pablo Lloyd’s FT Guide to Business Ethics examines why some companies fall short and how others lead the way.
Consumer psychologist Nadim Sadek reframes artificial intelligence as a creative partner in Quiver, don’t Quake.
Christopher Jarvis, a community development officer for Hounslow Council, shares Life Keeps Lifeing, a collection of poetry and reflections.
And Sam Stephens offers The Joy of Games, a handbook of 66 screen-free activities to reconnect with friends and family.
The Chiswick Book Festival has long championed local writers. The Observer once described Chiswick as “Britain’s most literary location”, and the Festival’s online archive — the Chiswick Timeline of Writers and Books — now lists nearly 500 authors who have lived in W4.
Book tickets for the Local Authors' Showcase
The 18th Chiswick Book Festival runs from 9–14 September . For tickets, programme details and updates, visit the Festival’s website.
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