Jenni Fagan, The Patron Saint of Literary Street Urchins
Wednesday 18 November 2026, 7.30pm. Balerno Parish Church, 2 Main Street Balerno, EH14 7EH
Jenni is a Scottish novelist, poet, screenwriter, and artist, acclaimed for works drawing on her experiences in the care system. A Granta Best Young British Novelist and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she has written novels including The Panopticon; The Sunlight Pilgrims; Luckenbooth; Hex, and the memoir Ootlin, winner of the 2025 Gordon Burn Prize. Her work spans fiction, poetry, theatre, film, and social activism.
Her much-anticipated most recent novel, The Delusions, imagines an afterlife run by cosmic and comic bureaucracy. Jenni’s incomparable imagination tries to capture the fragility of life on Earth.
It was reported in 2022 that the production company, Buccaneer Scotland, had made a deal with Jenni to take options to film her novels The Panopticon and Luckenbooth for television. The play adaptation of The Panopticon saw a sell-out run for the National Theatre of Scotland. Jenni made her directorial debut for her short script Heart of Glass, which screened on BBC4.
Jenni is a favourite at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and we are lucky to have her at our very own Pentlands Book Festival
