First Fiction with Natalie Adler, Imani Thompson, Gab Torr

Sat 10 October, 2026 at 1:00 pm

Meet three outstanding debut authors who have the literary world buzzing. 

Natalie Adler’s Waiting on a Friend is a captivating story of ghosts and queer resistance set in 1980s New York at the time of AIDS. Imani Thompson’s Honey is a razor sharp thriller set on campus. An intriguing, twisted comeuppance story about taking justice into your own hands. Gab Torr’s Hard Place is a darkly funny exploration of relationships and city life, revealing the tenderness and brutality of what it means to be young and gay today. 

Waiting on a Friend  – ‘This dazzles like a mirrorball’ –  Publishers Weekly 

Honey  ‘A serial-killer thriller with a side of feminist theory’ – The Guardian 

Hard Place  – ‘A many layered feast of a novel’ – Hannah Beer

Natalie Adler has an MFA in Fiction from Brooklyn College and a PhD in Comparative Literature. She was a Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellow at the Center for Fiction. She lives in New York City. 

Imani Thompson is a British writer of Jamaican heritage. She has been published in The Mays and British Vogue. After studying Sociology at Cambridge University she wrote Honey whilst working as a bookseller. 

Gab Torr is a 2021 London Writers Award winner and their writing was longlisted for the 2023 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize. Gab lives in Sheffield with their wife and no pets.