Missing Person

A powerful and distinctive voice… This is writing which really excites – Jonathan Edwards

In Missing Person, Zoë Walkington blurs the line between detective fiction and poetic sequence. Through a series of poems that range from the playful and surreal to gritty and mysterious, we piece together evidence around the disappearance of 10-year-old Kyle Petch from a suburban underpass in York. Along the way, our investigation will hear testimony from gravestones, AI chatbots, Forensic Science Reports, crisp packets, and the Readers Digest How to Clean Just About Anything. This electric new pamphlet combines powerful poetic experimentation with a gripping crime narrative and, for the attentive reader, a chance to solve the case.

Zoë Walkington’s pamphlet I Hate to Be the One to Tell You This was a winner of the 2022 International Book & Pamphlet Competition, judged by Romalyn Ante and Jonathan Edwards. She is a Professor of Psychology at the Open University, specialising in the psychology of police investigations.

Published April 2026.