Book Club / Author event with Wendy Erskine discussing THE BENEFACTORS

Individual readers and Book Club groups are invited to hear Author Wendy Erskine speak about her book The Benefactors. In conversation with Red Lion Book in collaboration with Essex Book Festival this event encourages questions from the audience. The Benefactors was an Observer Best Debut Novel 2025, longlisted for The Gordon Burn Prize and 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction.

The Benefactors is brutal, tender, and rigorously intelligent, The Benefactors is a daring, multi-voice presentation of modern-day Northern Ireland.

The event ticket is £16 which includes the book

This event is held offsite at a wheelchair accessible COLCHESTER ARTS CENTRE

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2026 WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION

AN OBSERVER BEST DEBUT NOVEL 2025

LONGLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE

What a beautiful, hilarious blast of brilliance (Donal Ryan, author of Heart, Be at Peace)

Meet Frankie, Miriam and Bronagh: three very different women from Belfast, but all mothers to eighteen-year-old boys. Gorgeous Frankie, now married to a wealthy, older man, grew up in care. Miriam has recently lost her beloved husband Kahlil in ambiguous circumstances.

Bronagh, the CEO of a children’s services charity, loves celebrity and prestige. When their sons are accused of sexually assaulting a friend, Misty Johnston, they’ll come together to protect their children, leveraging all the powers they possess. But on her side, Misty has the formidable matriarch, Nan D, and her father, taxi-driver Boogie: an alliance not so easily dismissed.