✍️ 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.

✍️ ANDY HOWLETT is a Birmingham based artist, writer & filmmaker. He shoots, edits & narrates exploratory & playful video essays such as ‘Escarpment’ (2023), commissioned by Solihull Council, & the feature-length ‘Paradise Lost’ (2021).

✍️ GARETH GAVIN is a writer from Birmingham. ‘Midland: A Novel Out of Time’ (Penned in the Margins, 2014) was shortlisted for the 2015 Gordon Burn Prize & ‘Never Was’ (Cipher Press, 2023) was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize.

✍️ JOEL BLACKLEDGE is a writer, researcher, & filmmaker from Birmingham. His short fiction has been published by Floodgate Press (‘Digbeth Stories’), Oslo Triennale (‘Gross Ideas’), & BBC Radio (Future History Archive).

🎤 We are delighted to welcome you to STORIE for a new season of experiments in prose feat. another line-up of exceptional writers from Birmingham inc. JOEL BLACKLEDGE, GARETH GAVIN, ANDY HOWLETT & JESS SHANNON.

🎟️ Please reserve your ticket via Eventbrite, link in bio