Meet the Newcastle author exploring grief, joy and teenage firsts in verse this World Poetry Day

Newcastle alumna Bridget Hamilton turns personal loss into a poignant and ‘joyful’ verse novel, We Wait for the Stars.

Hi Bridget, thanks for speaking with us! Can you tell us what first brought you to Newcastle?

I remember coming to an open day and there was just something about the vibe of the university and its place in the city that I really loved. The fact that it just seemed really vibrant and bustling but also had history. I felt that it was the best of everything!

I originally applied to do French and German and then changed my mind after doing better in my English Literature A-level than expected – it gave me the confidence to go for something I knew I would love.

When I arrived in Newcastle in September 2011, I moved into Marris House. I’m still in touch with the people I lived with in my first year – three of them were bridesmaids at my wedding! After the first year, I did what everybody does and moved to Jesmond, with Tesco and the Lonsdale pub on my doorstep.

You were involved in Newcastle Student Radio during your time on campus – and this is where you met your husband! Can you tell us about your experience with NSR?

One of the things that I think was most defining about my uni experience was getting involved with student media: a little bit with The Courier, but mostly with Newcastle Student Radio.

At the time, I think the radio station was a bit of a plucky younger sibling to the newspaper, and there was lots of potential for it to grow and to have more influence because it was a smaller team.

I started out presenting shows on the air, doing some talk radio – a bit like Woman’s Hour – and then in my final year I was Co-Station Manager.  That year, we hosted the annual Student Radio Association conference on campus, which brought lots of famous radio DJs and speakers to Newcastle!

After you graduated from Newcastle, you went on to study Radio Production and Management at Sunderland University. Where did life take you after that?

After graduating from my Master’s programme at Sunderland University, I began a career in the arts – including at BBC Newcastle and The Glasshouse (formerly Sage Gateshead) – but was constantly writing alongside these jobs.

I've written since I was tiny. My mum was a teacher at my primary school, and I used to sit in reception waiting for her to finish and practice my typing – I wanted to be able to touch type like Mrs Berry, the school secretary! That was the gateway into wanting to be an author. And at home, I would sit for hours on the family computer writing my own stories, which, in hindsight, were heavily plagiarised from Jacqueline Wilson!

So eventually, it got to the point where I needed more time than my jobs would allow to take writing seriously. I liked the idea of a freelance career because every week is different and you get to work with lots of people. If you love something, you can carry it on, but if you're not that into it, it's over quicker.

I left my full-time job (unknowingly) 8 weeks before the COVID-19 lockdown and started my journey as a freelancer. That was a stressful time! I started out delivering writing workshops, or writing small pieces for book festivals, charity campaigns. I loved it.

How has your journey as a writer been so far?

If you'd asked me what I wanted to be when I was like five or six, I would have said an author. But then, as I got older, I think maybe scepticism set in, and I didn’t think it was within reach. I’ve always loved storytelling though, and everything I have done since uni has been about sharing stories in some way.

In my first year of uni, I did two brilliant creative writing modules and got to learn from some really great poets and writers like Helen Limon, Sean O’Brien and Stevie Ronnie. And I also took a children’s literature module in second year – it’s wild to think that my book will now sit on shelves with books I studied at uni!

I started off writing a memoir about my dad’s life. He passed away in 2018 when I was 26. He had such an interesting, almost cinematic life – he lived in France for eight years before I was born, he got held up at gunpoint once when working in a hotel, he was a travelling actor who never knew his own dad – I really wanted to share that story with the world and get it published to honour him.

But then, as time went on, I realised that actually a fictional version of that would maybe have broader appeal. I was working with young people at the time through my freelance work, and so I took the 70,000+ words I had written of dad’s life and began weaving it into a new story: the story of Celeste.

We Wait for the Stars is a novel written in verse. Why did you choose to write your story in this way?

I'd read quite a few novels in verse, and they're becoming more popular of late, but it’s also a long-standing format. The stalwart children’s author Sarah Crossan has written in verse for a long time, but also Dean Atta, Elizabeth Acevedo and Tia Fisher.  

I was delivering writing workshops at a local school in Newcastle, and they had Black Flamingo by Dean Atta on their curriculum. A novel in verse is quite accessible for a teenage audience. It’s short and sharp, and easy to read in one go – so it feels less scary than an enormous text! You can pluck out certain poems and analyse them on their own as well as looking at the whole story.

So after reading a few, I felt like the poetry of writing would lend itself well to my lyrical story of Celeste. I gave it a go, not expecting much, but that’s how it’s stayed, and the publishers seem to like it! I’m not sure if I’ll write in verse forever, but it’s an awesome format and I would encourage anyone who hasn’t read a verse novel before to give it a go.

And finally, today is World Poetry Day. Do you have any advice for any budding poets or writers who are reading?

The biggest advice I can give is to seek out and apply for opportunities to get your writing in front of people – no matter how small that opportunity may appear! I submitted my work to a free writing award in the North East (and won!) and a judge of those awards ended up becoming my agent.

I had applied to be represented by lots of agents with my dad’s memoir and didn’t get anywhere, so you’ve just got to keep plugging at it and not be afraid to pivot and change the story slightly.

It was hard for me to let go of the idea of publishing dad’s story, because there was so much emotion behind it, but even though that story didn’t make me a published author it definitely made me a writer. I learnt so much about how to research a story, looking through archives and really getting to the nub of the issue.

I would also advise to not take the breakthrough stories you see online as ‘the norm’ – the stories of people getting a six-figure publishing deal within weeks of sending to publishers. It just doesn’t happen like that.

When I met my literary agent in 2023, I hadn’t yet finished the novel, so I spent the summer after the awards furiously typing away before sending it to her. There was then a round of edits before we sent it to publishers, and it was being sent out to multiple publishers for almost a year before it was picked up by Little Tiger. You may know them for children’s picture books, but they’ve recently diversified their range to cater for older children and young adults. That was January 2025, and we’ve been editing and designing covers and writing press releases since then – with the book due in July 2026. I’ve managed to grow and birth a full human child in that time!

Thanks for sharing your experience, Bridget, and good luck with the publication!

We Wait for the Stars is a stunning YA novel in verse from debut author Bridget Hamilton – winner of the Northern Writers’ Debut Award for YA Fiction 2023 – and published by Little Tiger. 

After losing her dad, Celeste’s life feels like it’s splintering. ​Then she makes a new friend in Katie, who shares her love of the beach, and meets Reuben, a fellow photographer. Maybe a new friendship group is just what she needs – as long as she keeps her growing attraction to Reuben out of the equation.​​ But Celeste soon finds that emotions can’t be bottled up…

We Wait for the Stars is out in July 2026, and available to pre-order now.

To keep up to date with Bridget’s writing, follow her on Instagram @bridgetwriting or visit her website.