Penny Boxall is a poet and children’s writer.
Letty and the Mystery of the Golden Thread, her debut novel for 9-12-year-olds, was published in January 2025 by Puffin, and was Blackwell’s Children’s Book of the Month for February 2025. It’s a Star Book and Debut of the Month pick at Love Reading 4 Kids, and is currently shortlisted for the East Sussex Children’s Book Award 2026. She was the recipient of a 2021 grant from Arts Council England for the development of her novel. It’s available from all good bookshops, including Blackwell’s, Waterstones and Foyles, and independents like Caper (Oxford), Little Apple (York), Mostly Books (Abingdon), Sam Read (Grasmere) and Mr B’s Books (Bath).
Letty and the Mystery of the Word Thieves is coming in May 2026. Pre-order a copy here.
Her agent is Christabel McKinley at David Higham Associates. For Film, TV and Stage enquiries, contact Clare Israel, and for Translation Rights get in touch with Leo Gratton.
Penny offers school visits, as well as mentoring and manuscript feedback on poetry and children’s fiction: please get in touch via the contact form if you’d like to discuss details and fees.
Penny delivered a hugely engaging talk to our Year 5s as part of our World Book Day celebrations. The children were hanging off her every word. She conveyed her genuine passion for eighteenth-century history through a perfectly-pitched, fully interactive presentation. The children were full of questions and curiosity afterwards, with one being heard to shout: “I LOVE history!” Highly recommended for Upper Key Stage 2 groups. – The Dragon School, Oxford
More about Penny
She is a Royal Literary Fund Bridge Fellow, working with sixth-form students in schools in Oxford and surrounding areas. She was the 2022/3 Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge, following two years as the RLF Fellow at the University of York. In 2019 she was Visiting Research Fellow in the Creative Arts at Merton College, University of Oxford.
Alongside poet Mary Anne Clarke, she contributed poems to the libretto of ‘The Christmas Story’, a new choral work by composer Gabriel Jackson for Merton College Choir. The recording of the work was an Editor’s Choice in Gramophone Magazine in November 2024.
‘Replaying the Tape’, her collaboration with palaeontologist Dr Frankie Dunn and percussionist Dr Jane Boxall, premiered in November 2023 in New York, and was released as an album in December 2024.
Penny’s work was shortlisted for the Hachette Children’s Novel Award 2020. Elsa and the Shadow Theatre, a novel in verse for children, is coming in April 2025.
She has held UNESCO Cities of Literature residencies in Kraków, Poland and Tartu, Estonia. She worked with Estonian poet Maarja Pärtna and sound-artist Liis Ring on a collaborative project for Tartu European Capital of Culture 2024, alongside an installation of poems in hiking cabins along the Nordlandsruta for Bodø Capital of Culture (Norway). She was the recipient of an ‘Among the Danes’ fellowship at Hald Hovegård, Denmark, in 2024.
She is completing a new poetry collection with support from the Authors’ Foundation, and was the 2023-2024 Writer in Residence at Wytham Woods, University of Oxford, working on a sequence of poems about soil and layers of history. ‘Decomposing Poems’, the resulting work, were designed to decompose in place in the woods; some were printed on apples, others on biodegradable paper, and others were buried.
Penny holds an MA with distinction in Creative Writing (Poetry) from UEA, and has had work featured in The Rialto, POETRY, The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Times, The North, Magma, Mslexia, The Dark Horse and Gutter, amongst other places. She has held residencies and fellowships at Gladstone’s Library (2017), Hawthornden Castle (2023/2017), Cove Park, and the Chateau de Lavigny, Switzerland (both 2018).
Penny Boxall 
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I’ve just been introduced to your work via York University’s FutureLearn course ‘How to read a poem’. I found your thoughtful piece that they used really helpful, and I’m planning to enjoy reading more of your work.
I agree with Margaret the piece was really clear and helpful.
Your piece on ‘How to read a poem’ was liberating for me. It helped me jump a few hurdles I had shied from. I look forward to looking at poetry as you did. Tee feeling and meaning have been my main focus up till now. I am looking forward to the jump! I am grateful to Uni of York’s Future Learn course for making me aware of you and reading some of your work.
I very much agree with the previous comments: a very helpful article!
Like the others I came from the York course and wanted to see how you used those ideas
Agree with all of the other York U students. Excellent essay on form.
I really rnjoyed your very clear Future Learn article. i now hope to discover your poetry. I have loved poetry since a small child, and A Childs Garden of Verses. But i have so much to learn! And learning more in Poetry is a perennial delight always. So thank you,
Thankyou for what is perhaps the most lucid – and succinct! – article on reading poetry that I have come across. Not only as a reader, but a writer. Wonderful!
Hi Penny,
I loved your Future Learn article: I think you absolutely nailed it in respect of explaining what form is and why a poet – as well as the reader – needs it (either to conform or work against it) in order to convey or comprehend the meaning.
Thank you!
Your contribution to Future Learn was very clear and jargon free while still explaining the reason and need for rules and structure in poetry,It has given me an incentive to persevere with the course and also appreciate finished poetry works in particular that they don’t just happen.
Another FutureLearn student here saying thank you.
Im new at the game of wordplay on reading and writing a poem. Your Future Learn article was very well done and illuminating. Thanks!
I will explore your work Penny as I have learned about you via the FutureLearn essay you wrote on the form of a poem, which like everyone above I found fascinating. While I do explore the shape and structure of the poem to a degree before I read I have not done so to date in the detailed way you clearly do. I loved your metaphor using sport, really worked for me. Good luck with your writing in the future.
Your Future Learn essay on how to read a poem was like a great poem in itself. Thankyou. You have helped open the door to poetry for me and I look forward to reading some of your own poems next
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I have just read your piece on the meaning of form, within the University of York “How to read a poem” course, and was blown away by it. So mind-opening, and at the end left me with the impression that the piece had left me with the revealing aftertaste you get from a poem in itself – beautiful images and sounds evoked. Thank you for writing that!