Paul McVeigh Residencies

*RESIDENCY SHORTLIST SPOTLIGHT*

Elia Isaac is a writer living in south-east London, working across poetry, theatre, fiction and creative non-fiction. Their writing explores intimacy and the ways people try to make themselves legible to one another. They won the 2024 Verve Poetry Festival Competition and the 2025 Disabled Poets Prize, were runner-up for the 2025 Aurora Poetry Prize, and were shortlisted for the 2026 Wasafiri New Writing Prize. Their piece Every Twenty Minutes, on solidarity work in Masafer Yatta in the occupied West Bank, was runner-up for the 2026 Tom Grass Literary Prize. Elia’s work has been commissioned and supported by Audible’s Emerging Playwrights Fund, London Writers Centre’s Writers Commissions and The Literary Consultancy’s Free Reads programme. Elia is currently working on their debut novel, supported by an Arts Council England DYCP grant and a Faber Academy scholarship. You can follow them on Instagram here – @eliaisaac_