New from Spoken Label (Author / Artist Chat Podcast) an returning chat with Amanda Nicholson.

Amanda Nicholson is the author of ‘Ghost of Me’ which was a finalist in the thriller category of The Author Elite Awards after its release in March 2020. It is now being re-released this February.

She also runs the Substack page ‘I Am Not Calm’.

Book will be available on all of the usual place.

Latest Podcast from Spoken Label (Author / ArtistPodcast) features making her debut, Lucy Beth.

Lucy Beth (she/her/hers) is a multi-award-winningemerging performer, theatre-maker and lecturer from Inverurie, Aberdeenshire.

​​She graduated with Distinction from the University of Glasgow’s MLitt Theatre & Performance Practices Course after being awarded a PGT Excellent Scholarship bythe University.

​​Lucy has worked on various stage, screen, and audioprojects. Her recent credits include Blanca in Ten Feet Tall's production of "Guilty" by Rona Munro at Granite Noir Festival. Penny in “How To Train Your Dad To Be A Feminist” at the Aberdeen Arts Centre, and she has alsostarred in TMM Recruitment’s Christmas Advert, “Scary Tale of New Work,”

​Beyond conventional performing, part of Lucy's practiceconcerns dialect preservation. She speaks Doric and seeks to create and perform works in Doric as a means of continuing to render the dialect present. Her Doric works have reached critical acclaim and have earned Lucy several awards.

​Her Doric solo theatre show, “Ma Name Is Isabelle” wasperformed at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival and was highlighted as one of SNACK Magazine’s Picks of the Fringe. It also received an Edinburgh Fringe TheatreAward from the Fringe Theatre Awards. The show has received 5-star reviews in the press.

​

Lucy won the Best Newcomer Award at The Doric FilmFestival for her film, "Fit Wye Nae" in 2024. In 2025 she performed in "Sticky Business", winner of the Best Film Award at the 2025 Doric Film Festival.

​​Lucy’s Doric poetry won her a place in the finals of the Loud Poet's Slam Poetry Competition in Aberdeen in June 2025 and made a guest appearance at the LoudPoet’s Edinburgh Fringe show, which was awarded 5 stars.

​​She was one of the Young Women’s Movement’s 30 Under 30 Honourees for 2025.

​​Lucy was also a 2025 Scottish Emerging Theatre AwardsWinner.

More details can be found at: https://www.lucy-beth-performer.com/

First of a two part Podcast today from Spoken Label (Spoken Word / Poetry Podcast) features discussing 'I am nature' an Environmental Poetry book with two of their poets, Leaf Pettit and Diana Sanders.

Leaf Pettit lives in the vale of Clwyd with her husband and three children.

Rural north ales has been her home since she was three years old and she has developed a deep connection with its landscape and environment, choosing to raise and home-educate her children.

Leaf has been active in caring for local green spaces and has played a leading role in a community project to develop a green space at the heart of her village, including planting native hedging to forma wildlife corridor and wildflower areas.

Leaf has a BA (Hons) in Literature Life and thought and imaginative writing and an MA in Creative Writing.

Leaf's work has also appeared in the writer's wheel magazine and a couple of local publications, including the 'stillness' pamphlet produced from the Wellbeing Weekend at Saint Eidan Pilgrim Church in 2023.

Diana Sanders is a composer and award winning poet. She is the composer of six published works for flute and has curated several events that combine music and poetry, some of which have been on podcasts and local radio.

Her poetry publisjed has been published in magazines and anthologies in the UK, USA and India and her poem 'Birth' was third in the Welsh Poetry Competition in 2016. She has a BA from Nottingham Trent Creative University in Creative Arts (Music and Drama),

In partnership with her friend, Pat Sumner, she runs a monthly writing group.

She is the editor of the local Friends of the Earth magazine and is passionate about caring for the environment.

More about this book can be read here:
https://www.veneficiapublications.com/product-page/i-am-nature

Latest up from Spoken Label (Poetry Podcast) features the return of our friend Sarah James (also known as Sarah Leavesley ) talking about her new poetry book 'Darling Blue'.

Darling Blue interweaves ekphrastic poems with a book-length fictional poetry narrative of love, lust and letting go. The poems inspired by Pre-Raphaelite artworks include QR codes, which readers can scan to view the pieces after or alongside their reading. Blue here is more than a colour or inspiration; it is desire, secrecy and sorrow – the essence of ‘feeling / really alive’, yet ‘distance’s illusion’.

“A fascinating creative hybrid weaving ekphrasis and cohesive narrative, Darling Blue deftly balances its fictional speaker’s personal response to various Pre-Raphaelite artworks, with rich descriptive hints that resonate way beyond the mere visual. Exploring the complex tensions between the public sphere and private activities, this collection is a gallery tour of the narrator’s unfulfilling relationship with an unattainable partner, through to the ultimate redemption of self-worth and new love. James’s finely crafted and intelligently controlled poems brim with vivid imagery and lush sensory detail, reminding the reader ‘how brightly sunlight shines through // when freed from a cracked mirror’.”
Sarah Doyle, Pre-Raphaelite Society Poet-in-Residence

“James uses the lyric and ekphrasis to create a profound and moving collection on the cost of love; what endures and how we survive its wake. As vivid and emotive as its pre-Raphaelite sources, Darling Blue is also startlingly direct, eloquent and consoling on the things we find hardest to put into words. An unmissable collection.”
Luke Kennard

More details about said book can be found here;

https://www.sarah-james.co.uk/?page_id=17191

Latest up from Spoken Label features making her debut, Suzy Aspell.

Suzy is a Bedfordshire poet, living and writing in Luton. Curious about world cultures, she has worked in the travel industry for many years including repping in Spain and teaching ESL in Taiwan. Her poems are published in numerous anthologies, online and print magazines. Suzy also tutors GCSE English students struggling with ADHD and Dyslexia. She is passionate about art, politics and the planet and has a very pampered cat full of mischief and brio.

Her debut book 'Webstrung' is now out.

More details here:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/book-launch-suzy-aspell-webstrung-tickets-1978839759991

OR

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1917408056?ref=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_TTZ92CBDFTX850KXECZ5_1&ref_=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_TTZ92CBDFTX850KXECZ5_1&social_share=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_TTZ92CBDFTX850KXECZ5_1&bestFormat=true

Happy New Year all folks!

Back with a bang, the first Spoken Label (Spoken Word Podcast) Podcast of the year features the Hongwei Bao.

Hongwei Bao (he/him) is a Nottingham-based queer Chinese writer, translator and academic. He is part of the Fifth Word Playwrights, GOBS Spoken Word Collective and Nottingham Playhouse Writers’ Room. He is also a Middle Way Mentee for writing fiction and a New Earth Theatre theatremaker. His work explores queer desire, Asian identity, diasporic positionality and transcultural intimacy.

Hongwei is the author of Dream of the Orchid Pavilion (poetry pamphlet, Big White Shed, 2024), The Passion of the Rabbit God (poetry collection, Valley Press, 2024) and Queering the Asian Diaspora (nonfiction, Sage, 2024). His short story ‘A Postcard from Berlin’ was a runner-up for the Plaza Prize for Microfiction in 2023.

Hongwei has performed poetry at Bad Betty Live, City Arts Nottingham, Dandelions Poetry, DIY Poetry, ESEA Authors LitFest, ESA NE Newcastle, Five Leaves Bookshop, Fluent in Both, Lighthouse Bookshop Edinburgh, Kif Kif Antwerp, Nottingham Central Library, Nottingham Poetry Festival, Nottingham Playhouse, Notts Poetry, Nowhere Netherlands, Paper Crane Poetry, Prague Pride, Shaded Writers, Speech Therapy, and The Common Press London.

Instagram: @patrickbao123

Bluesky: @queercomrades

Self-Portrait as a Banana can be purchased from here - https://amzn.eu/d/0GOtbOo

Latest up from Spoken Label (Author / Artist Podcast) features Dr Jack Hunter.Dr Jack Hunter is an anthropologist exploring the borderlands of consciousness, religion, ecology and the paranormal. He is an Hon-orary Research Fellow with the Alister Hardy Religious Experience Research Centre, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, and a tu-tor at the Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture, Uni-versity of Wales Trinity Saint David. He teaches on the MA in Ecol-ogy and Spirituality and the MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astrol-ogy. He is also a tutor for the Alef Trust on their MSc in Conscious-ness, Spirituality and Transpersonal Psychology, where he teaches on the ‘Approaches to Consciousness’ module, and teaches ‘The Va-rieties of Anomalous Experience’ for the California Institute for Hu-man Science. He is the author of Manifesting Spirits (2020), Spirits, Gods and Magic (2020), Ecology and Spirituality (2023), and The Folklore of the Tanat Valley (2025). He is the editor of Deep Weird (2023), Greening the Paranormal (2019) and Damned Facts (2016), and co-editor of Talking With the Spirits (2014), Mattering the Invis-ible (2021), Folklore, People and Place (2023) and Sacred Geogra-phy (2024). He lives in the hills of Mid-Wales with his family.

Latest up from Spoken Label (Author / Artist Podcast) features the return of our friend with Part 2 of an extended chat, tea buff, weird fiction aficionado and abstracted songwriter, Eric Loveland Heath, professionally known as E.L. Heath.

In this return on Spoken Label, we review Eric's releases on Plenty Wenlock Records in 2025 and also the venture of his label into more publishing as well as discuss what is next for this label.

Some links include:

https://www.facebook.com/ELHeathuk/

https://plentywenlockrecords.bandcamp.com/

https://x.com/PlentyWenlock

https://www.instagram.com/plentywenlock/

https://plentywenlockrecords.bigcartel.com/

https://bsky.app/profile/plentywenlock.bsky.social