Join us as we welcome Natalie Gregory and Rukky Brume to discuss their debut novels with Hana Walker-Brown.

Art can help us make sense of life. Join Hana Walker-Brown in conversation with two debut novelists, Natalie Gregory and Rukky Brume, about how personal losses inspired their rich, evocative, culturally specific novels with universal themes of grief and family secrets.

Natalie Gregory is the winner of the Primadonna Prize 2023, having submitted the opening of her debut novel Mother, Ghost, Mango Seed. HarperCollins published the book in June 2026. Her work has also been shortlisted for the University of East Anglia’s David T.K. Wong Fellowship. Her short story, A Bowl of Soup, was published in Together in the UK’s anthology, Hear our Stories by Victorina Press in August 2023. This story also won the Creative Writing NZ flash fiction competition and was shortlisted for the Exeter Short Story Prize. Natalie is Thai-German and grew up across Southeast Asia before moving to the UK to study English and History followed by an MSc in International Politics. She lives in a thatched cottage in North Buckinghamshire with her husband and two children.

Rukky Brume grew up in Lagos, Nigeria. She studied Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and works as a finance lawyer. Rukky is an alumna of the Faber Academy's flagship writing course. In 2021, an early extract of what would become Rukky's debut novel was longlisted for the inaugural Women's Prize Trust's Discoveries Programme. Her debut novel, It Comes in Waves, is out now. She lives in London.

Hana Walker-Brown is a multi-award-winning storyteller, author and educator working across film, podcasts and narrative non-fiction. Guided by curiosity, her work asks how we might meet one another—and the world—with compassion, and what role storytelling can play in shaping social change. She is the creator of the New York Times bestselling, multi-award-winning Audible Original The Beautiful Brain, the author of the critically acclaimed A Delicate Game, and maker of the BBC Radio 4 documentary In Pieces, about her experience of burnout. She also makes the hit podcast Get Birding with Sean Bean. Her work has been commissioned by Audible, the BBC, Spotify, Sony and Warner Bros., and recognised by the Peabody Awards, the Rose d'Or, the Webby Awards, Amnesty International and the British Podcast Awards. She was named one of the UK's Top 50 Inspirational Neurodivergent Women. Alongside her creative practice, Hana lectures in journalism at Goldsmiths, University of London, and facilitates storytelling and audio production workshops in women's prisons, using creativity to help people regain confidence and agency.

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