Join us for a festive evening of fiction from Northern writers and publishers!

Join the Northern Fiction Alliance (NFA) at Blackwell’s Manchester for their annual Winter Showcase, featuring five authors published by five Northern indie publishers. The NFA is a radical publishing collective devised to showcase the creativity, diversity and spirit of risk-taking that sets publishers in the North of England apart, and we’re really excited to return to Blackwell’s for this cosy festive event.

The event will begin with readings, followed by mince pies, wine and mingling.

Doors: 6.30pm, Starts: 6.45pm

Location: Blackwell’s Bookshop, University Green, 146 Oxford Rd, Manchester M13 9GP

From Peepal Tree Press:

Pete Kalu is a 2024 winner of the Society of Authors Travelling Scholarship Award. He has previously won the BBC/Contact Dangerous Comedy Award and The Voice / Marcus Garvey Essay Award. He received his PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University in 2019. His essays can be found scattered in publications including Encounters with James Baldwin (Supernova Books 2024) and academic journals. He is a Writers Mosaic alumnus and was writer in residence at University of West Indies, Trinidad Campus. He is a Reading Fellow of Royal Literary Fund. Pete will be reading from Act Normal.

From Fly on the Wall Press:

David Hartley is a writer, performer, artist, editor, and tutor who creates strange stories about strange things for strange people. His work is preoccupied with animals, neurodiversity, folklore, and the untapped possibilities of storytelling forms. He has performed in unconventional spaces including bus stations, ancient libraries, decaying edgelands, a Swedish train station, and among a forest of tattooed bodies. His collaborations have included spectral musicians, Estonian performance artists, and a plant orchestra. Hartley holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Manchester. He is the author of two short story collections: Fauna (Fly on the Wall Press) and Incorcisms (Arachne Press). Hartley is the editor of Obscura: New Uncanny Tales (Comma Press) and lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Manchester. David will be reading from The Subtle Art of Short Fiction.

From Comma Press:

Brontë Schiltz is a journalist with The Big Issue and Big Issue North, a freelance contributor to Horrified Magazine, and a PhD candidate with the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University, where she researches the Televisual Gothic (horror on and about TV). She is a writer of short stories, flash fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry and theatre, and her work has featured in publications including Lotus Eater Magazine, Olney Magazine and The First Line. Brontë will be reading from Nigel Kneale’s Tomato Cain, the sole collection of short fiction from this seminal author.

From Northodox Press:

Chloe De Lullington is an author and screenwriter based just outside Manchester, having grown up on the outskirts of pretty much everything as well – which, as it turns out, makes for the most compelling stories! Drawn to the eccentric and the liminal, she’s good at funny with a side of sad. Cacoethes is her debut novel. Chloe will be reading from Cacoethes.

From Carcanet:

Canadian poet Evan Jones [Ευριπίδης Ιωάννου] lives in Manchester. His first collection of poetry, Nothing Fell Today But Rain (2003), was a finalist for the Governor-General’s Literary Award for Poetry. He co-edited Modern Canadian Poets (2010) and has since published Paralogues (2012) and Later Emperors (2020). His translation from the Modern Greek, The Barbarians Arrive Today: Poems and Prose of C.P. Cavafy (2020), was a TLS Book of the Year. Evan will be reading from Men of the Same Name).