Cause & Effect PR has launched a bespoke PR service dedicated to book PR, publishing, and literary events.
The Northern-based agency has been endorsed by the global author Lee Child, who has worked with Cause & Effect PR at various events for over a decade.
Lee Child said: “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.”
A registered B-Corp, Cause & Effect began 15 years ago as an ethical, mission-led PR agency. In the last decade, it has built a strong niche in the publishing, books, and arts sectors.
It operates across the UK and represents authors, book festivals, literary prizes, publishers, arts organisations, and charities who support reading advocacy and writing development.
Festival clients include the north’s longest-standing book festival, Ilkley Literature Festival, which they’ve supported since 2019. The team also provided support to Durham Book Festival in 2024 and 2025.
Cause & Effect is a family-run agency, founded in 2010 by Clair Challenor-Chadwick, who has a background in marketing.
Her co-director and sister Ann Chadwick began her career as a bookseller and fiction buyer at Dillons, now Waterstones, in Chiswick, London. She then retrained as a feature writer, working on regional newspapers in Lancashire and the Channel Islands, before moving into a PR career.
The sisters also curate and create festivals, talks and events.
Last year, they helped to programme and promote the inaugural Whitby Lit Fest, securing headline authors including Lee Child, Rob Rinder, Miriam Margolyes, Sir Alan Ayckbourn, and Shaun Usher. The team is now working with the festival committee on its 2026 line-up.
Clair established a Dickens festival in the Yorkshire market town of Malton from 2015 to 2019, working closely with Selina Scott and Miriam Margolyes, putting the towns links to the author on the national media map. It featured on BBC Breakfast, ITN News, The One Show, Songs of Praise, and on a BBC prime-time special, Christmas in the Country.
The agency has also hosted stand-alone talks and book signings with high-profile authors including Miriam Margolyes, Chris Packham, and Steve Backshall, as well as supporting emerging talent with bespoke publicity campaigns.
Miriam Margolyes said: “The combination of intelligence, ferocious work ethic, massive creativity and utter loyalty make Cause my top choice.”
The sisters also specialise in advocacy work, supporting the national charity The Reading Agency’s annual Quick Reads campaign last year, and are currently working on the 2026 campaign.
In 2024, they helped put New Writing North’s bid for government £5m funds for a new centre for writing in Newcastle on the media agenda. The campaign to help rebalance the London-centricity of the publishing industry featured on BBC Radio 4 Today, PM, BBC Radio 2, the Guardian, The I Newspaper, Telegraph and Bookseller.
Last year, Cause & Effect also launched New Writing North’s new platform for working-class writers, The Bee, in national broadcast and print media.
Claire Malcolm MBE, CEO of New Writing North, said: “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.”
The team has a niche for promoting the crime writing genre. It helped position the Theakston Crime Writing Festival as a world-leading event in its earlier days, providing PR support from 2013-2018.
They went on to represent CrimeFest in Bristol for five years until the event organisers retired in 2025, and continue to provide PR for the prestigious CWA Dagger Awards. It has significantly grown the profile of the awards, which last year featured on BBC Radio 4 Today, the I Newspaper, Guardian, and Daily Express, as well as helping raise its international profile, co-ordinating five Japanese TV crews at the 2025 London awards ceremony.
Ann Chadwick, director at Cause & Effect, said: “Books are definitely our bag. We felt with our depth of experience, contacts, and creativity it was time to launch a bespoke strand dedicated to this PR delivery. We also want to fly the flag for the North, where we are based – working across the UK.”