About the Book…
A creative writing academic falls under the spell of his colleague, a poet whose life seems to shimmer with a freedom he cannot reach. At home, there is Michael: beautiful, steady, safe. But the poet is something else entirely—she is restless, luminous, untouchable.
As his fixation deepens, the boundaries between admiration, desire and possession begin to blur. The poet, his Kingfisher, draws him further from the life he knows, into a world shaped by art, longing and illusion.
Then illness arrives, closing in on them all, and the tightrope he’s been walking starts to sway.
Kingfisher is a beautifully crafted novel of queer desire and ambition, grief and creativity, and the fine lines between intimacy and obsession
About the Author…
Rozie Kelly is a novelist based in West Yorkshire. After reading English Literature and Creative Writing at Warwick University and the University of Manchester, she moved to Hebden Bridge, where she works for the Arvon Foundation, hosting creative writing courses.
Prior to being longlisted for the Women’s Prize 2026, Rozie was the recipient of the 2024 Northbound Book Award, produced by New Writing North, The University of York and Saraband, and she was shortlisted for the PFD Queer Fiction Prize 2023. She was one of the eight participants in the inaugural 2024 Prototype Development Programme, a scheme that offers extended support and career development to eight emerging writers and artists in partnership between Prototype Publishing and New Writing North.
