Read Regional returns! Digital author events from libraries across the North
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Read Regional, the annual reading campaign for the North of England, returns this spring for a series of digital events hosted by libraries across the region.
Read Regional is a celebration of brilliant new books from the North of England, which was founded by New Writing North in 2008. The campaign is funded by Arts Council England and is produced in partnership with 23 library authorities across the region. In previous years it has profiled writers including AA Dhand, Andrew Michael Hurley and Jenn Ashworth.
The current programme began in 2020, but many events had to be put on hold due to Covid-19 restrictions.
Instead, the ten selected authors will be meeting audiences online from April until June. At the easy-to-access digital events, the authors will introduce their work and share stories about the writing process, as well as answering questions from audience members.
Read Regional’s ten must-read titles by writers based in the North include Remembered by Yvonne Battle-Felton, which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019; Supper Club, the debut novel by Lara Williams, which won the Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize 2019; and Icebreaker, Somerset Maugham-winning writer Horatio Clare’s travelogue aboard an icebreaker in Finland’s waters.
The full list of Read Regional 2020-21 titles is:
CHILDREN’S FICTION
A Witch Come True, James Nicol (Chicken House)
FICTION
The Moss House, Clara Barley (Bluemoose Books)
Remembered, Yvonne Battle-Felton (Dialogue Books)
The Blame Game, C. J. Cooke (HarperCollins)
A Shadow Intelligence, Oliver Harris (Little, Brown)
The Last Thing She Told Me, Linda Green (Quercus)
Supper Club, Lara Williams (Hamish Hamilton)
MEMOIR
Icebreaker, Horatio Clare (Vintage)
POETRY
The Celox And The Clot, Hafsah Aneela Bashir (Burning Eye Books)
Baldwin’s Catholic Geese, Keith Hutson (Bloodaxe Books)
For the selected authors, Read Regional is not only an opportunity to meet readers and talk about their work, but also to celebrate libraries as places of inspiration and connection, even in the digital space.
Find out more about all the events and download digital reading guides on our Read Regional page