The Writers
New Gothic Fiction
Some of the best contemporary writers read from their new work, influenced by gothic themes and subjects. Classic period fiction with a modern sensibility, a modern re-booting with an environmental twist, and a re-imagining of a horror fairy tale.
The writers will talk about the material which inspires and attracts them with an opportunity for a Q&A led by Lucy Ward of write2screen
Some of the best contemporary writers read from their new work, influenced by gothic themes and subjects. Classic period fiction with a modern sensibility, a modern re-booting with an environmental twist, and a re-imagining of a horror fairy tale.
The writers will talk about the material which inspires and attracts them with an opportunity for a Q&A led by Lucy Ward of write2screen
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LAUREN OWEN
Lauren Owen read English Literature at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, before completing an MA in Victorian Literature at the University of Leeds. She subsequently studied at the University of East Anglia, graduating with an MA in Creative Writing in 2008, and receiving the 2009 Curtis Brown prize. Her first novel is called THE QUICK. HELEN IVORY
Helen Ivory is a poet she also teaches for the Arvon Foundation, The Poetry School and mentors for the Poetry Society and is Course Director for a new non-accredited set of courses in Creative Writing at UEA/WCN which will launch in autumn 2014. DANI REDD
Dani graduated from Queen Mary’s University in 2008 with a degree in English Literature. She recently won first prize in the Words & Women short story competition. Her writing combines elements of erotica, psychological realism and the supernatural. Dani will be reading from Vore MARY NATHAN
Mary Nathan is a prize-winning writer for adults and children. In 2013, she won a place on the Escalator programme run by Writers’ Centre Norwich, and was also awarded a grant by Arts Council England to work on her novel 23 Maudlyn Street. LYNSEY WHITE
Lynsey White has won the Bridport Prize and a Canongate Prize for New Writing. In 2013 she was chosen for the Escalator Literature scheme, and will read an extract from her first novel, MADDER HALL, which she is working on with funding from Arts Council England. |
THE QUICK is a Gothic supernatural thriller with a twist. The extract Lauren will read is taken from chapter one of the novel, which focuses on the lives of Charlotte and James, two siblings growing up in a remote country house in Victorian Yorkshire. With little adult supervision, the two children have to bring themselves up.
WAITING FOR BLUEBEARD is a dark fantasy which explores how a girl could grow up to be the woman living in Bluebeard’s house. The story begins with a part-remembered, part-imagined childhood, where seances are held, and a father drowns in oil beneath the skeleton of his car. When her childhood home coughs up birds in the parlour, the girl enters Bluebeard’s house paying the tariff of a single layer of skin. This is only the first stage of her disappearing, as she searches for a phantom child in a house where Bluebeard haunts the corridors like a sobbing wolf.
VORE is a chilling mystery set in Wales in the aftermath of a global farming crisis. The population now eat artificial meat . One isolated farmer lets strangers into his life and discovers that civilisation is a long way away and that messing with nature and the food chain has dire and dark consequences.
23 Maudlyn Street is a gothic novel about a mysterious doctor’s house in eighteenth-century Cambridge. Mary will read from the start of the novel when two visitors arrive at a churchyard to look for a very special grave.
MADDER HALL is a playful take on Gothic horror. It tells the story of teenage housemaid Liddy, who falls into the hands of a group of unsavoury gentlemen in a country house in the 1970s.
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