We’re delighted to welcome Michael Stewart and Yvonne Battle-Felton to Blackwell’s in partnership with the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies at MMU. Michael and Yvonne will be discussing their chilling gothic novels with Emma Liggins.

Doors: 6.30pm, Start: 6.45pm

Tickets at £4 or free when selecting a Book & Ticket option or purchasing a copy of either book in store.

About Black Wood Women:

Yorkshire, 1649.

Since they fled Ireland, Caragh and her family have hidden their true identities to enable them to start a new life in England. But when Caragh finds her parents brutally murdered by a Protestant determined to rid the area of Catholics, she must flee again.

Travelling east, she comes to a forest, where she meets a coven of women who wear their hair loose and refuse to follow men’s rules.

Having found acceptance at last, Caragh is unaware that a different kind of persecution stalks the black wood women, and their days in the forest are numbered.

About Curdle Creek:

Osira, a forty-five-year-old widow, is an obedient follower of the strict conventions of Curdle Creek, an all-Black town in rural America governed by a tradition of ominous rituals designed to keep the residents safe.

Curdle Creek has one particularly strict policy: one in, one out.

And one day, it is Osira’s turn.

Forced into the great unknown. The sinister reality of her birthplace unravels around her. As she comes face-to-face with those she believed were lost, Osira must reckon with all she has ever been told and confront the insidious cruelties of inheritance.

Curdle Creek is an American Gothic in the tradition of Shirley Jackson that offers a mash-up of the surreal and literary horror that will appeal to fans of Ring Shout, The Salt Grows Heavy, and Lovecraft Country. Yvonne Battle-Felton’s propulsive tale is layered and eerie and quite unlike anything else.

About the Authors:

Michael Stewart is a multi-award winning writer, born and brought up in Salford, who moved to Yorkshire in 1995 and is now based in Bradford. His debut novel, King Crow, was published in January 2011. It won the Guardian’s Not-the-Booker Award and has been selected as a recommended read for World Book Night. He is a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Huddersfield, where he is the director of the Huddersfield Literature Festival.

Yvonne Battle-Felton is an American writer living in the UK. Her debut novel Remembered was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction (2019) and shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize (2020). She was commended for children’s writing in the Faber Andlyn BAME (FAB) Prize (2017) and has three titles in Penguin Random House’s Ladybird Tales of Superheroes and three titles in Ladybird Tales of Crowns and Thrones. Yvonne has a PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University and is Associate Teaching Professor at Cambridge University where she is the Academic Director of Creative Writing.