🎤 This Thursday: STORIE returns for Spring with new prose works from GRACE BEARD, LAURA BLAKE, JAKE TRELEASE & BEN WADDINGTON
🎟️ Last few tickets available at the link in bio. We want 🫵 there!
✍️ BEN WADDINGTON has lived in Moseley since 1994 and has been leading guided walks around Birmingham and beyond since 2006, researching and revealing the city's unremembered stories. He is the author of ‘111 Places in Birmingham that You Shouldn't Miss’.
✍️ JAKE TRELEASE is a writer from South Shields who runs Tales About Nowt, a radio show about North East writing. He is currently working on a collection of short fiction about regional identity in post-industrial towns.
✍️ LAURA BLAKE is a Birmingham-based writer of English and Jamaican descent. Her debut novel, ‘Go Home Birdie Brown’ (HarperFiction), will be published in June 2026.
✍️ GRACE BEARD is a writer and editor from Birmingham. She has worked in travel journalism for ten years and is currently the travel editor at Time Out. Outside of journalism, she's slowly but surely working on a collection of short stories.
🎤 Head to Kilder Bar for our Springtime STORIE session & hear new work from another scintillating line-up of writers including GRACE BEARD, LAURA BLAKE, JAKE TRELEASE, & BEN WADDINGTON.
🎟️ Please reserve your ticket via Eventbrite, link in bio
🗣️♦️ We returned to the mic last week as STORIE began it's 2026 slate with four incredible new works from ELFRIEDE ATWAL, THOMAS GLAVE, SJ KIM & LYZA LAWAL each story invisibly linked to each other by ghosts, folklore, & personal & cultural histories. Another great night!
🎤 Few weeks left until our first STORIE of 2026, featuring another full West Midlands based line-up including ELFRIEDE ATWAL, THOMAS GLAVE, SJ KIM & LYZA LAWAL.
🎟️ Tickets are currently SOLD OUT, but please check the Eventbrite (link in bio) for any returns
🗣️♦️ Astonishing work from our December line-up POLLY BARTON, TARIQ GODDARD, KESOMI & SOPHIE SLEIGH-JOHNSON that had our audience held throughout. The variations, the detours, the laughs & the gut-punches. Exactly what we set STORIE up for. Bring on 2026!
📸 REBEKAH LYNDON
✍️ LYZA LAWAL is a writer & book blogger based in Birmingham. She grew up in London & was schooled in Nigeria. A lover of African classical literature & magical realism, she explores books through a cultural lens. Lyza has contributed to readin.mag & Project Myopia.
✍️ SJ KIM was born in Korea & raised in the American South. Her writing on racial, gendered, institutional & political violence has appeared in Wasafiri, Oxford American, & The Hanok Review. She resides in the UK & teaches creative writing at the University of Warwick.
✍️ THOMAS GLAVE is the author of four books & the editor of an anthology, ‘Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles’. A two-time Fulbright Scholar, Glave's work has received numerous honours & awards including a prestigious O. Henry Award.
✍️ ELFRIEDE ATWAL is a writer studying narrative design in videogames. They spend most of their time either accidentally breaking their own games or working on their novel, a trans horror reimagining of ‘The Road’.
🎤 Join us for the first STORIE of 2026 & another eclectic night of experiments in prose featuring a full line-up of West Midlands-based writers including ELFRIEDE ATWAL, THOMAS GLAVE, SJ KIM & LYZA LAWAL.
🎟️ Please reserve your ticket via Eventbrite, link in bio
🎤 NEXT WEEK: We’ll be back at our @Kilder_Bar home with👇 unbelievable line-up.
POLLY BARTON, TARIQ GODDARD, KESOMI, SOPHIE SLEIGH-JOHNSON
The end of year gift on everyone’s list…
🎟️ SOLD OUT: Keep eyes on our Eventbrite page, link in bio, for returned tickets
✍️ SOPHIE SLEIGH-JOHNSON is a Southend-on-Sea-based writer. She holds a PhD from Goldsmiths College, London, where she now teaches as an Associate Lecturer in Fine Art Critical Studies. Her performance work, comprising sound collage & spoken word with printmaking props.
✍️ KESOMI (aka OLLY FORRESTER) is a writer, spoken word artist & drummer based in Bournville, Birmingham. As one half of playwright duo Forrester & Fletcher, his play 'Banterworks' was shortlisted for BBC Writersroom 'Script Room Drama'.
✍️ TARIQ GODDARD is the author of seven novels including his 2002 debut, the Whitbread (latterly Costa) Prize shortlisted ‘Homage to a Firing Squad’. He has been nominated for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, & the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize.
✍️ POLLY BARTON is a Japanese translator & writer. Her translations include ‘Where the Wild Ladies Are’ by Aoko Matsuda, ‘Hunchback’ by Saou Ichikawa, & 'Butter' by Asako Yuzuki. She is the author of ‘Fifty Sounds’ & ‘Porn: An Oral History’.
🎤 Join an electric line-up featuring author & translator POLLY BARTON, novelist TARIQ GODDARD, writer & performance artist SOPHIE SLEIGH-JOHNSON & Birmingham-based spoken word artist KESOMI for the final STORIE of 2025!
🎟️ Please reserve your ticket via Eventbrite, link in bio
🗣️♦️ Wow! From our first ever open subs call, five working-class writers stepped up to the mic to perform their own EXPERIMENTS IN WORKING-CLASS PROSE as part of this year's Birmingham Literature Festival. And what a night it was...?! Thank you to everyone who joined us 🙏
📸 REBEKAH LYNDON
✍️ SHARONA KENWRICK is a writer living in Birmingham. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Birmingham. Sharona is currently looking at independent presses for publication of her collection of short stories, ‘The Noise Made by People’.
✍️ JULIE IRIGARAY is a French Basque writer. Her poetry pamphlet ‘Whalers, Witches and Gauchos’ was published by Nine Pens in 2021 & her poetry has been featured on BBC Radio 4. Her poems have won or been finalists in twenty-four poetry competitions inc. The Bridport Poetry Prize
✍️ SAM HUNT is originally from North Walsall. His twenties were a dysfunctional period in which he wrote poetry as an outlet. When he began living healthier in his early thirties he took to writing fiction.
✍️ SOPHIE HUCKFIELD is an artist, writer & designer. Recent writing includes ‘OUTWORK’ (2023) a collaborative project & book on the history of women Printworkers in West Bromwich.
✍️ UTTARAN DAS GUPTA is an Indian writer & journalist who lives and works in New Delhi, Birmingham & Goa. He has published a novel ‘Ritual’ (2020) & a book of poems, ‘Visceral Metropolis’ (2017).
🎤 Announcing the full line up for EXPERIMENTS IN WORKING CLASS PROSE: five writers selected from our first ever open submissions call.
✍️ UTTARAN DAS GUPTA, SOPHIE HUCKFIELD, SAM HUNT, JULIE IRIGARAY & SHARONA KENWRICK
🎟️ Please reserve your ticket via Eventbrite, link in bio
🗣️♦️ Huge thanks to everyone who joined us for the opening STORIE event of season three & to our stunning all Birmingham line-up JOEL BLACKLEDGE, GARETH GAVIN, ANDY HOWLETT & JESS SHANNON!
📸 Here's some snaps from the night courtesy of our resident photograher Rebekah Lyndon
🗣️♦️ We are absolutely thrilled to announce that STORIE has been awarded an Arts Council England Lottery Fund grant to support our work until June 2026!
🙏 Thank you @artscouncilengland.bsky.social for supporting experimental prose writing & writers in the West Midlands.
✍️ JESS SHANNON is a writer from Birmingham & proud graduate of the Warwick Writing Programme. She completed her degree in Literature and Creative Writing in 2020 & her MA in Writing in 2021. Her debut novel ‘Cleaner’ will be published by Bedford Square in August 2025.
