SBWN at Granite Noir 2026

Join us on 21st February at the Granite Noir festival!

We’re excited to be showcasing an amazing lineup of Black writers at Granite Noir, Aberdeen’s festival of crime writing!

We have a few caregiver/childcare (£30) and travel (£50) bursaries for participants on low incomes. If you will need a bursary to attend, please complete our form and we’ll do our best to help.

All SBWN events will adhere to our Safer Spaces Policy. You can learn more about our policy here.

Can’t make it in person?

The event will be livestreamed.

You can access the livestream on Granite Noir’s website and YouTube channel.

All live streaming links, including the BSL stream, will be sent out closer to the date.

In-person & Online Panel

Messy, Complicated and Dangerous Women

Curated by Nailah King from the Scottish BPOC Writers Network

In recent thrillers and horror stories, narratives centring on ‘female rage’ are gaining traction. These are characters we know we shouldn’t root for, yet we find ourselves compelled to read on in an effort to understand their motivations.

However, Black women are often overlooked in these discussions. Who has the right to seek revenge or express rage, and why?

This year, we’re hosting an exciting panel featuring Celine Saintclare, Mo Moshaty and Oyinkan Braithwaite, authors who all skilfully portray morally ambiguous and complex characters.

Chaired by Nailah King

Tickets are £12.50 and are available from the Aberdeen Performing Arts website. We can’t wait to see you there!

Read on below to learn more about our speakers.

Facilitator/Speakers

The links included in this episode use our Bookshop.org affiliate link. As a bookshop.org affiliate, we earn 10% on sales. By using our affiliate link to buy any books you help support us and all funds earned go towards supporting our mission.

Oyinkan Braithwaite is a Nigerian-British novelist and writer. Her first novel, My Sister, The Serial Killer, was published in 2018 to wide acclaim. It was a Sunday Times bestseller, longlisted for The Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and won the Crime and Thriller Book of the Year in the British Book Awards 2020. Her new novel, Cursed Daughters, is out now.

Mo Moshaty is a horror author, producer, and lecturer whose work explores women’s trauma, identity, and transformation through the lens of horror. A Cognitive Behavioral Therapist by trade, she bridges psychology and storytelling to unearth the emotional architectures of fear, grief, and survival within the genre.

Her debut novella, Love the Sinner (Brigids Gate Press, 2023), won the Independent Press Award for Horror in 2024, and her latest collection, Clairviolence: Tales of Tarot and Torment (Tenebrous Press, 2025), has been featured in Paste Magazine’s Most Anticipated Horror Books of Fall 2025 and Reactor Mag’s Can’t Miss Indie Press Speculative Fiction list.

Celine Saintclare is a London based author with English and Caribbean heritage. Her debut novel, Sugar, Baby was published with Atlantic Books in the UK and Bloomsbury in the US in 2023. Sugar, Baby was awarded a VOGUE Best Book of 2024 and Saintclare was named ‘one to watch’ by Publishers Weekly. Her second novel, The Feminine Art of Revenge was published by Corvus, Atlantic in September 2025.

Nailah King is a Canadian horror and crime writer now living in Scotland, writing grim stories about haunted Black women pushed to the brink. Her work has appeared in the Feels Zine, GUTS Magazine, The Humber Literary Review, Transition Magazine, This Magazine and Carousel Magazine, and she is the Communications Manager at Scottish BPOC Writers Network. Nailah’s short story “The Dead Last List” was one of the winning entries of Night Terror Magazine’s 2024 Horror for the Holidays short story competition.

Access

Before participating in the online live stream, please note the following:

The event will take 1 hour.
We have a number of data and child/carer bursaries available – request a bursary by completing our form.
BSL interpretation provided by Granite Noir and can be accessed through the BSL stream
Event is hosted online (link will be sent to participants closer to the date).
To participate you will need an internet/wi-fi connection, a desktop or mobile device to view the livestream.
You may mute your mic/switch off video, or take a break at any time.
This event is open to ALL (regardless of racial and/or ethnic background)