Common Ground: A novel launch with Elissa Soave
Featured Speakers
Elissa Soave & Jemma Neville
Common Ground is a rousing story of community activism, and a love letter to community spaces. It follows the unlikely friendships that form between plot-holders at Kenmar Allotments, in Uddingston.
When the local council announce their plans to turn the allotments into luxury housing, the plot holders and local community rally together to save the place that has become a sanctuary for fractured souls.
About our speaker: Elissa Soave is a Scottish writer. Her short stories have been published widely, and she has written two plays which were performed in Glasgow and Edinburgh by the Short Attention Span theatre company.
She won the Primadonna Prize 2019, and her debut novel, Ginger and Me was published by HQ, Harper Collins in July 2022. The novel was shortlisted for the Saltire Society's Scottish First Book of the Year Award 2023, and film rights of the book have been sold to Mother Pictures. Elissa's second novel, Graffiti Girls was by HQ, Harper Collins in March 2025, with her third novel, Common Ground, following in March 2026. Elissa was a judge for the Primadonna Prize 2022 and the Curae Prize 2023.
Our host: Jemma Neville is an author and journalist, best known for Constitution Street, a memoir about the interconnecting lives of neighbours on one street. Often dialectic, her work is always personal and political.
