NWN x University of York: Pride of Place
An evening celebrating writing from and of the places we call home. Hosted by New Writing North and University of York, with Saraband Books.
Join the University of York and New Writing North for an evening of author readings, discussions and networking celebrating the North’s vibrant writing scene. In recent years we have seen a surge of support for talented emerging writers in our region, significant successes from independents such as Saraband, and stunning explorations of Northern landscapes – of its places and people.
The University of York, New Writing North and Saraband continue to encourage and support writing talent with programmes such as the NorthBound Award. This event is a chance to showcase some of the fantastic books created in the region – and to inspire those stories which are yet to be written.
7pm – Readings from NorthBound winners Adam Farrer and J. A. Mensah, and Northern Writers’ Awards winners Kit Fan and Alison Armstrong.
Short break
8pm – Roundtable on the importance of supporting and publishing Northern writing with Sara Hunt (Saraband) , Janine Bradbury (University of York), Karen Lloyd (editor of North Country). Chaired by Kathryn Tann (New Writing North).
8.45pm – Drinks and networking for students, writers and literary professionals.
Accessibility info:
This event will be held in-person at Streetlife Hub on Coney Street, York. The front doors have a flat threshold and are wide enough for easy access by wheelchairs and scooters. The Exhibition and Workshop spaces are on the same level (ground floor), the floor is laminated, and chairs are plentiful. A staircase with handrail is currently the only access to the Basement (not required for this event). We do not have toilet facilities for event attendees; the nearest accessible toilets are at City Screen Cinema, a short distance (225 feet) away on Coney Street.
Please note that Coney Street is pedestrianised with restrictions on vehicle access between 10.30am and 7pm.
The readings and panel discussion at this event will be recorded, captioned and made available to watch on the New Writing North website. If you have additional access needs or any further questions, please email [email protected].
Speakers:
Adam Farrer is a writer and editor who has performed at festivals and events including the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Manchester Literature Festival and the Northern Lights Writers Conference. His work has been published in the anthology Test Signal and he edits the creative non-fiction journal The Real Story, as well as teaching writing workshops. Farrer won the 2021 NorthBound Book Award for Cold Fish Soup, his first book, which was published in August 2022 in the UK and October 2022 in North America.
Kit Fan‘s debut novel is Diamond Hill (2021). His third poetry collection The Ink Cloud Reader will be published by Carcanet in April 2023. He is the author of two books of poems, As Slow As Possible (2018) and Paper Scissors Stone (2011). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022.
Alison Armstrong lives in Lancashire. She published her first novel Fossils (Saraband) in 2022 and produced her first play Lost Voices (Literature Matters Award RSL/ACE supported) in 2021. She is working on a book on the East Yorkshire coastline and a collection of short stories.
Karen Lloyd is writer in residence with Lancaster University’s Future Places Centre and the editor of North Country: An Anthology of Landscape and Nature. She has published two award-winning books of non-fiction with Saraband – The Gathering Tide and The Blackbird Diaries, and her most recent book, Abundance: Nature in Recovery, (Bloomsbury 2021) was longlisted for the James Cropper Wainwright Prize for writing on conservation.
J.A. Mensah is a prose and theatre writer and lecturer in English and Creative Writing at the University of York. Her plays have been produced by Live in Newcastle and Pilot Theatre in York, among others. Her short fiction has been published by Comma Press, Dead Ink and Bloomsbury. Her debut novel won the inaugural NorthBound Book Award and was listed for the Desmond Elliott Prize.
Sara Hunt is the founder and director of independent publisher Saraband, a small press of the year finalist in 2022. Originally from Lancashire, she worked in London and New York for both large corporate and smaller publishers before founding Saraband in 1994. Saraband publishes literary fiction and narrative non-fiction, particularly in nature and place, sustainability, and memoir, and is a partner in the NorthBound Book Award with New Writing North and the University of York. Saraband’s authors have won or been shortlisted for prestigious literary prizes, from the Booker to the Wainwright, Desmond Elliott and Paul Torday awards, as well as regional prizes.
Janine Bradbury is an academic and poet and is Senior Lecturer in Literature at The University of York. Her critical work has been published by Bloomsbury and Palgrave Macmillan, and she has appeared on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour and written for the Guardian. In 2020, Janine won a Poetry London Mentorship award and was shortlisted for the Oxford Brooks Poetry Competition. In 2021, she was nominated for a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship. She is a co-organiser of the Ledbury Poetry Critics Scheme and a co-founding editor of BLACKLINES: A Journal of Black British Writing.