THE WORD FACTORY NEW STORY FESTIVAL PRESENTS:
The Strangeness of the Everyday
Enjoy an evening of inspiring reading and conversation with four of the strongest new voices in the world of short story writing: Ruby Cowling, Yan Ge and Ben Pester, hosted by Word Factory's Tom Conaghan, the publisher of the innovative Scratch short story books.
All three writers are known for their use of innovative forms to explore the wonderful and mundane in the everyday world.
Ruby Cowling
Ruby Cowling grew up in Bradford and lives in London. Her short fiction has won The White Review Short Story Prize and the London Short Story Prize among other awards, and has been published in magazines including Lighthouse and The Lonely Crowd. Her collection This Paradise (Boiler House Press, 2019) was longlisted for the 2020 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and shortlisted for the 2020 Edge Hill Prize.
Ben Pester
Ben Pester's short story collection Am I in the Right Place? was published in 2021 by Boiler House Press, and was long listed for the 2022 Edge Hill Prize. His work has appeared in The London Magazine, Granta, Hotel, Five Dials and elsewhere.
Yan Ge
Yan Ge (颜歌) was born in Sichuan, China in 1984. She is a fiction writer in both Chinese and English, and is the author of thirteen books in Chinese, including five novels. She has received numerous awards and was named by People’s Literature magazine as one of twenty future literature masters in China. The English translation of her latest novel The Chilli Bean Paste Clan was published in 2018. Another translated novel, Strange Beasts of China, was published in 2020/2021; both won English PEN Translates Awards. She was on the judging panel of the International Dublin Literary Award 2019. In 2021, she was on the final selection panel for the Laureate for Irish Fiction. Her English language debut short story collection Elsewhere will be published by Faber in the UK and Scribner in the USA in spring 2023, followed by a novel Hotel Destination. Yan lives in Norwich with her husband and son.
Tickets cost £15 and are available via eventbrite.