Cause and Effect, a specialist Book PR and advocacy service; amplifying the voices of writers, festivals, and literary communities.
A First‑Rate PR Agency With Heart
“Cause and Effect is that rare thing – a first-rate PR agency with a heart and a conscience. I have seen their work up close over many years and I can’t recommend them highly enough.” — Lee Child
Who We Are
Cause & Effect PR is an award‑winning B‑Corp with over 15 years’ experience supporting the literary world.
We work with authors, book festivals, and charities dedicated to reading, advocacy and writing development.
What We Do
PR & Communications
We deliver strategic PR and marketing for:
- Writers
- Books
- Festivals
- Prizes
- Charities
- Publishers
Advocacy & Campaigning
We champion the transformative power of reading and writing. Our advocacy work includes:
- National lobbying campaigns for New Writing North
- Launching the Working-Class writing platform, The Bee
- UK‑wide reading initiatives with The Reading Agency
Programming & Events
We help shape and promote literary events, including the inaugural Whitby Lit Fest, working with leading writers such as Lee Child, Rob Rinder, Miriam Margolyes, Sir Alan Ayckbourn, and Shaun Usher.
“Ann and Clair at Cause and Effect have amply demonstrated their expertise, efficiency, and general good humour… Highly recommended.” — Jack Barber, Whitby Lit Fest Committee
Our Work
Book Festivals
With over a decade of festival PR experience, we help boost audiences, revenue, and profile.
Whitby Lit Fest (2025)
In 2025, Cause and Effect PR were tasked with helping to programme and promote the inaugural Whitby Lit Fest.
An initiative by the Whitby community, it has a steering committee of local businesses – The Whitby Bookshop, Hetty & Betty (fish & chip restaurant), alongside North Yorkshire Council Libraries, Visit North Yorkshire, and English Heritage.
The first festival took place across four days (6-9 November), and featured 50 events with over 60 authors.
We secured leading authors to headline the first festival, including Lee Child, Steph McGovern, Rob Rinder, Miriam Margolyes, Shaun Usher, Sir Alan Aykbourn, and Rob Cowen. The headline names supported a wide-ranging festival with an ambition to nurture local talent with writing workshops, a poetry strand, and events for schools and young people.
Raising Profiles
PR activity included the front page of The Express Review, Yours magazine, Coast, Condé Nast Traveller, Marie Claire, and the BBC.
What they said
“The inaugural Whitby Literary Festival in 2025 was a delight from an author’s point of view – a beautiful spot on the Yorkshire coast, immaculate organization, everything within easy walking distance, and passionate and engaged audiences. It was a triumph, and I hope it repeats for many, many years to come.” – Lee Child
“One of the best weekends ever. It was utterly wonderful. Gorgeous town, fascinating events, and people … brilliant organisation by local Committee and Cause. I’m definitely returning next year…Joyous. Uplifting. Beautiful. Richness unparalleled!” – Miriam Margolyes
“Whitby Lit Fest was a joy; thoughtful, generous, and full of heart. A real celebration of words and ideas by the sea.” – Rob Rinder
Ilkley Literature Festival (2025)
For the past five years, we’ve supported Ilkley as their PR agency, delivering bespoke support each year (Aug-Oct).
Activity includes writing features directly in regional news, and placing stories nationally, achieving circa 150 pieces of meaningful media.
Ilkley has featured in iNews, The Times and Times Radio, Country Living, Marie Claire, Bella, Country and Town House, Good Housekeeping, Yours, with extensive profile in the Yorkshire Post, T&A, Ilkley Gazette and BBC radio/online.
“Thank you so much for doing phenomenal job on the PR once again. The regional press – broadcast and print – definitely helped to keep ticket sales strong across the whole of the sales period. It’s probably been the most consistently strong ticket sales we’ve experienced since I’ve been here. You are creative, tenacious, and brilliant and it’s a joy to work with you.” – Erica Morris, Festival director
Durham Book Festival (2025)
Placing stories in targeted regional magazines, arts sites, radio, magazines and newspapers, we also worked with key stakeholders. These included Visit Britain/Visit England , Durham council, North East CA, Durham University and Northumbria University press teams, the Forward Prizes for Poetry, Channel 4, and others around marketing support and PR activity.
As journalists, we also interviewed authors directly for local magazines, as well as placing the festival in Good Housekeeping’s Best Book Festivals. 2025 activity included placing an exclusive interview in The Guardian for a new podcast, Forged in the North, launched at the festival.
Malton Dickensian Festival
Cause & Effect PR produced and hosted a Dickens’ festival, featuring Miriam Margolyes, in the market town for a number of years.
As well as programming author talks, street theatre, cinema screenings and working with local schools and the community on arts and outreach work around Dickens, we secured high-profile media coverage reclaiming Malton’s unique literary heritage and links to the author.
We secured high profile support from the Dickens’ descendent and author, Lucinda Hawksley, and broadcaster, Selina Scott.
We generated massive media interest, with stories on BBC Breakfast, ITN News, The One Show, Songs of Praise, and a BBC prime-time special, Christmas in the Country, with Ellie Harrison. as well as national and regional newspapers.
“The combination of intelligence, ferocious work ethic, massive creativity and utter loyalty make Cause my top choice. Thank you for all you do.” – Miriam Margolyes
Other Festivals
Cause has also helped promote other festivals over the years, including NiddFest – a festival dedicated to nature writing hosted in Nidderdale.
We also supported a portfolio of literary festivals including the Raworths Literature Festival, Harrogate for a number of years during our time as the PR agency for Harrogate International Festivals.
Awards
The CWA and the Dagger Awards (2025)
We have represented the CWA Dagger Awards for 6+ years, and built its profile significantly.
Cause & Effect helped reposition the CWA as a more inclusive organisation, announcing its first non-white chair (Vaseem Khan) to press, including profile in the Guardian.
The announcement of its Diamond Dagger winners in 2024 resulted in 200+ media stories, including the Independent, Guardian, Daily Mail, Evening Standard, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL resulting in a total audience reach of 180.6m.
Each year, the international reach of the awards has built. In 2025, we co-ordinated five Japanese TV news crews and multiple Japanese newspaper correspondents to cover the live London awards ceremony. The media monitoring service Cision reported the Japanese media coverage on the morning following the event reached a total audience of 54.1 million.
It followed on from huge media profile secured earlier in the year, when we announced the winner of the CWA Diamond Dagger; 2025’s winner was Mick Herron. The story ran on BBC Radio 4 Today, The Guardian, The I Paper, Daily Express, and Euronews. Check out the Coverage Book here.
“Ann and Clair at Cause PR do an incredible job for their clients, and I wouldn’t be without them. Recently we had more than anticipated interest from the press and had it not been for Ann and Clair I would not have been able to cope. Their calm professionalism throughout was incredible, and they were even replying to emails out of hours to be of assistance. Five Stars – Highly Recommended!” – Heather Fitt, co-ordinator CWA
Crime Writing
CrimeFest (2025)
Cause UK represented CrimeFest for 5 years until the final event in 2024.
We managed its social media (at the time Twitter, with over 12k followers), and Facebook, liaised with publicists and publishers, edited e-newsletters, worked with Visit Bristol, and promoted its awards with the Waterstones PR team, alongside general PR.
PR highlights include: positioning the team as thought leaders, with comment in The Bookseller on their bursary for authors of colour; securing profile in the Guardian, Prospect magazine, the Express, BBC radio, ITV West, and placing authors on BBC Radio 4’s Good Read, Times Radio, hosting several podcasters at the event, and securing the Observer to attend, resulting in a 3-page feature.
Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival
Cause UK was the PR agency for Harrogate International Festivals from 2013 to 2019.
One of our responsibilities was positioning Harrogate as the hottest crime writing festival in the UK. You can find case studies of our work on our main site.
In 2018, we achieved media coverage worth £3m, securing broadcast on Sky News and ITV Calendar, with meaningful features in the Spectator, Times, Guardian, Telegraph and Express, and secured a media partnership with the Mail on Sunday, achieving 348 pieces of coverage.
The Independent hailed Harrogate as wearing the crown for the UK’s bookiest town; the Financial Times picked the festival as one of the best book events.
Coverage has included how to write a bestselling crime novel in Marie Claire magazine, exclusive author interviews in the Mail on Sunday, Saturday Telegraph and Sunday Times.
Reading Advocacy
The Reading Agency Quick Reads (2025)
In spring 2025, we helped the national charity The Reading Agency launch World Book Night and their Quick Reads initiative.
Quick Reads encourages reluctant and lapsed readers back into the habit. We helped organise a free Quick Reads giveaway and author talk at one of the country’s most beautiful bookshops – Waterstones Bradford – during the City of Culture celebrations, filmed by BBC Look North.
The launch was tied to the charity’s latest research on the nation’s reading habits, which saw media stories in The Bookseller, The Sunday Times, The Independent and Times Radio.
We’re thrilled to be working on the Quick Reads campaign once more for World Book Night 2026 in the National Year of Reading.
Writing Advocacy
New Writing North (2024)
Leading a coalition of civic, industry and academic leaders, New Writing North’s CEO Claire Malcolm developed a bid for a new national centre for the writing industries to be based in the North East, to rebalance the southern-centric publishing sector.
Cause launched this campaign to target media to influence government (to support their funding bid), working with key stakeholders.
We placed the story on BBC Radio 4 Today programme, arranging a pre-record with arts correspondent, Colin Paterson, and a further feature on BBC Radio 4 PM with Evan Davies, alongside regional radio (BBC Newcastle, Greatest Hits North East). It also ran on BBC online, the front page of the local newspaper, and globally via MSN, Yahoo and Euro news (with interview requests from as far as India). The Guardian ran an exclusive interview with Claire Malcolm. We then positioned an open letter signed by 80+ authors, with comment from author Pat Barker, in a full-page spread in The i Newspaper.
New Writing North secured the funds. See press reach here.
Writing Development Projects
In the few months we supported New Writing North, we secured over 177 online pieces of meaningful coverage, with stories on BBC Online, ITV, BBC R4, BBC R2, The Guardian, The i, VisitBritain, Good Housekeeping, Writers Online, Juno magazine, trade publications and local media such as Newcastle World, the Northern Echo, Yorkshire Post and Crack Magazine.
Supporting its wider advocacy work, we pitched and placed a feature on how to get into screenwriting for Writing Magazine, liaised with the Ch4 press team to announce its Ch4 Writing for Television Awards, and launched a new audiobook studio in Newcastle.
See an overview of press reach here.
“I have had the great pleasure of working with Ann and Claire for the past few months on a substantial contract of work around corporate and project communications and PR. We have never had so much successful coverage and profile, it has been extraordinary.
“They are skilled planners, writers, and managers of stakeholder relationships at the highest level and with their extensive media contacts and great relationships they have been invaluable in helping us to progress and profile a number of key areas of work and corporate communications. I hope to continue to work with them in the longer term and would not hesitate to recommend them to other arts, culture, and charitable organisations.” – Claire Malcolm MBE, CEO of New Writing North
Working‑Class Writing and The Bee (2025)
The Bee – a website, magazine, and podcast – launched in response to the growing chasm for working-class talent, and continues the legacy of Michael Sheen’s A Writing Chance. It is edited by Richard Benson – the former editor of the iconic magazine, The Face.
The brief was to launch The Bee on Bank Holiday Monday – May Day, which has historic roots in giving workers a break. We liaised with BBC R4 again, who ran it as a broadcast exclusive on the Saturday PM show, before the Monday print embargo. The Guardian then ran it in print and online on May Day.
Interviews ran on BBC Newcastle Radio and BBC Online. Ben Lawrence on The Telegraph wrote an impassioned and blistering comment piece supporting The Bee in the face of declining social mobility in the Arts. And it inspired news stories and comment in a key trade publication, The Bookseller.
Other media included a feature in Writing Magazine, an opinion piece in the Yorkshire Post and interview on Times Radio.
See the coverage here.
Author Talks
At Cause & Effect, we don’t just provide infrastructure support and promotion for event organisers, but often host successful sell-out stand-alone author talks and events ourselves.
You can see a few examples over the years below.
Authors
We increasingly support individual authors to raise their media profile – see a case study below on the author, Gavin Collinson.
Gavin Collinson
Cause has partnered with author, Gavin Collinson, on many projects over the years.
Gavin asked us to provide PR support to launch his thriller, An Accident in Paris, back in 2022. We secured interviews with Gavin on BBC Radio’s The Culture Café, and author features in Writing.ie, Writing Magazine, Crimespree magazine, Culturefly and reviews in Crime Fiction Fix and Crime Time UK.
We were thrilled too to secure major national profile with features in Bella magazine, Female First, and The Express.
In 2022, we commissioned Gavin to write a stage play which Cause & Effect produced (The Man Who Captured Sunlight). It was performed at the Royal Hall, Harrogate, in front of special guests, Freddie Fox and Joanna David.
He’s also delivered author talks at the Malton Dickens Festival (on his work writing for Doctor Who and the timelords links to Dickens), and Gavin chaired multiple talks at CrimeFest in Bristol, and latterly, Whitby Lit Fest (pictured above interviewing Yvette Fielding).
Ann and Clair at Cause & Effect PR were absolutely delighted to be thanked in the acknowledgements of Gavin’s 2023 thriller, The Romanov Code.
Work With Us
We help stories travel further. If you’re an author, festival, or charity looking to amplify your impact, we’d love to talk.
Contact us →
Ann Chadwick, director.
ann@causeuk.com