Award-winning authors Jenny Colgan and Lucy Mangan will close the first day of the Festival, with a special conversation discussing the authors who have inspired their own bookish habits, and the joy of discovering hidden gems and lost voices in women’s fiction. This event is in partnership with Penguin Michael Joseph, celebrating 90 years of bestselling publishing with the launch of their new Mermaid Collection.
Jenny Colgan, the multi-million-selling novelist whose warm, witty and heartfelt stories have won her legions of fans around the world, will join forces with Lucy Mangan, one of Britain’s sharpest critics and most engaging voices in print and on air. Together, they will discuss the power of women’s fiction, the authors who shaped them, and their role in reintroducing overlooked classics to today’s readers.
The Mermaid Collection, launching this September, brings back to life mid-to-late-twentieth-century novels by women that remain fresh and strikingly relevant today. Each title has a new introduction by a contemporary writer, offering a bridge between past and present.
The first four books are:
● Down Among the Women by Fay Weldon, introduced by Jenny Colgan
● Lucy Carmichael by Margaret Kennedy, introduced by Lucy Mangan
● Through a Glass, Darkly by Helen McCloy, introduced by Gillian McAllister
● Fenny by Lettice Cooper, introduced by Jennie Godfrey
Jenny Colgan is the author of numerous Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling novels and has won various awards for her writing, including the Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance, the RNA Romantic Novel of the Year Award and the RNA Romantic Comedy Novel of the Year Award. Her books have sold more than fifteen million copies worldwide and have been published in 36 territories, and in 2015 she was inducted into the Love Stories Hall of Fame. Jenny is married with three children and lives in Scotland.
Lucy Mangan is a journalist and columnist. She spent two years training as a solicitor but left as soon as she qualified and went to work much more happily in a bookshop instead. She got a work experience placement at the Guardian in 2003 and hung around until they gave her a job. Lucy is now TV critic at the Guardian, and a columnist for The i newspaper. She has written for most of the major women’s magazines, including Grazia, Cosmopolitan, and Stylist. Bookish, a sequel to her 2018 memoir, Bookworm, was published March 2025 by Vintage. Lucy Mangan is represented by Juliet Pickering at Blake Friedman.
This conversation will be a highlight of the festival programme – a chance to hear two leading literary voices reflect on women’s writing past, present and future.
The Edinburgh Women’s Fiction Festival returns on Friday 26 and Saturday 27 September 2025 at Christ Church Morningside. The festival champions writing for, by, and about women – from commercial and romance to historical, literary, and book club fiction – giving readers the chance to connect with their favourite authors and hear new voices.
Find out more and purchase tickets at https://www.edwomensficfest.co.uk/
