Interview: Louise Powell

Photo by Anna-Marie Fitzgerald

Louise Powell is an award-winning working-class writer from Middlesbrough whose debut novel ‘Underdogs’ was published on 2nd July 2026. Set in County Durham in 1998, it follows ten-year-old George and his grieving, long-term unemployed dad Reg as they’re drawn into the underground world of greyhound flapping, a now-lost community that Louise has been part of her whole life. Told in the poetic lilt of County Durham dialect, the book won the Sid Chaplin Northern Writers’ Award 2023 and has been received in a way that Louise hadn’t expected.

Joanna Long finds out more…

You started writing ‘Underdogs’ in 2018 and within a year the last flapping track in County Durham had closed. Did that shift change what you were doing?
It became about reclamation and preservation. I actually filmed the last, well, the penultimate meeting at Wheatley Hill, not realising at the time that it was almost over; nobody knew. And then I thought, this isn’t just an interesting story anymore, this is now about reclamation; that space is gone, we can’t bring it back, but I can use the written word to try and resurrect it.

You’ve described the flapping community as your people. How do you balance that love with the honesty that a novel requires?
I’ve always been motivated by wanting to represent the world as I found it, which was very welcoming, very warm. I found belonging there among the kids that I wasn’t finding in my home environment or at school. When I went flapping, these were my people. They understood my struggles. But it’s not rose-tinted glasses, it’s just showing flapping for what it was, with welfare front and centre; these dogs were our pets, our athletes once a week, and we kept them for the rest of their days.

1998 is a very specific setting. What does that moment give you that a contemporary setting wouldn’t?
It was when I first really got involved, when my brother got his greyhound, when I was about six. But it was also just after Labour got in. I remember my dad waking me up with the news, absolutely buzzing, he went out and painted our little wheelbarrow with the date, 1st of May 1997. There was this real sense of, maybe this is a glimmer of hope. And that’s what I was tapping into with Reg and George too. They’ve had a rough time, but there’s something around the corner, maybe.

George is ten years old and narrating from a very adult world. How did you keep him real?
The novel is actually narrated retrospectively; it’s thirty-odd-year-old George speaking to you, looking back. That’s the way we tell stories in working-class communities. But it’s very much grounded in what it was like to be a child, the colours, the smells, the sounds, going from a home environment that could be quite difficult to a flapping track where everything feels bright and exciting and alluring. And George is real, you know, he does bicker with Reg, they have their little barneys. He’s not a saint, he’s just a very real lad.

Reg could easily have slipped into stereotype. How did you keep him ‘Reg’?
Because that’s not the parenting I saw. Reg is struggling, but he’s always motivated by love ultimately, George is his number one priority, even when he can’t feel like he’s making a good job of things. I wanted to explore different facets of masculinity. Reg is interested in gardening, He’s quite a gentleman in manner. He’s just really decent in very difficult circumstances, and I wanted to push that against what people might expect.

Where did Bertie come from?
He sort of emerged gradually across the drafts. I went through nine before I truly found his voice, but he’s rooted in that sense of awe I had as a kid watching the miners in the bar at Easington. You really felt like you were in the presence of royalty. And there was a woman who used to come to the track from Middlesbrough, big gold hoops, bangles, a thick gold necklace on, and when I saw her, it was like seeing the queen. My dad would wind her up saying, “Are you worth mugging with all that gold?” That kind of thing really stays with you. Bertie’s very much about that presence, that flamboyance. He came out of it all very gradually.

The dialect in the book is striking and unusual even in these modern times. Was there ever pressure to soften it?
Come hell or high water, it was going to be in dialect. The first drafts were in standard English and they just weren’t working. I wanted to capture the sound of that world as well as the sights and smells. And I’ve been very fortunate, my agent and editor have been absolutely 100% on board. There’s been no pressure at all to tone it down, it’s just been accepted.

The long form must have demanded something different versus your radio plays and poetry. What did it require that those hadn’t?
Patience, faith, and sheer bloody-minded persistence. I’d ditch drafts of between 12,000 and 50,000 words if they weren’t working. But what I loved about prose was being able to access George’s interiority, really go deep under his skin. When my agent first read it, she said, I want more of George, what’s he thinking, what’s he feeling? And I remember thinking, oh, I’m allowed to actually explore that now, because I haven’t got an actor telling me not to. That was really freeing.

You won the Sid Chaplin Northern Writers’ Award while still writing the book. Did that give you confidence or add pressure?
The night before I got the email telling me I’d won, I was reading the draft and thinking, this is terrible, what am I doing, wasting my time, and then I found out. At the ceremony, I burst into tears when I got back to my seat. I had the award on my desk for the whole time I was finishing the book, and when I was really lacking in self-belief, I’d look at it and think, no, New Writing North and Michael Chaplin believe in me, I’ve got to find a way to keep going. And to win an award named after Sid Chaplin, someone whose writing is just full of warmth and energy and spirit, who I think of as an absolute master of prose. On a lot of levels, it was what I needed.

And the last one, if Goldie could read ‘Underdogs’, what would she make of it?
She’d probably ask why I hadn’t written her dialogue in Irish! But I think she’d be very happy to see the love George has for her. And she’d probably say, well, of course I wanted to race, I’m a greyhound, that’s what I was born for. Of course I’m going to go wild for it.

Underdogs by Louise Powell is published by John Murray Originals and is out now in paperback, ebook and audio.