Claire Carroll and Genevieve Jagger in conversation with Jenn Ashworth

We're thrilled to be hosting the launch of two delightfully dark and macabre debuts by two incredible new writers - Claire Carroll's THE UNRELIABLE NATURE WRITER and Genevieve Jagger's FRAGILE ANIMALS. Claire and Genevieve will be in conversation with Jenn Ashworth.

Doors: 6.30, starts: 6.45

Tickets are £3.00 or free when ordering a copy of the book. THE UNRELIABLE NATURE WRITER and FRAGILE ANIMALS will also be available to purchase on the night and both authors will be signing copies after the talk. If you would like a signed copy but cannot make the event, please contact us on 0161 274 3331 or manchester@blackwell.co.uk and we can arrange this for you.

About the books:

The Unreliable Nature Writer by Claire Carroll

The Unreliable Nature Writer is the eagerly-awaited debut collection of exhilarating, macabre and dreamy short stories from Claire Carroll. Shortlisted for The White Review Prize and winner of the Short Fiction Wild Writing Prize, Carroll portrays an unsettlingly hot, vaguely familiar world of humans facing the strain of intimate and global anxieties – trying to live alongside new technologies, failing environments and unknowable natural crises. Delightful to read and unsettling to imagine, these are haunting stories about love, loss, strangely-exposing housing applications and cows.

Fragile Animals by Genevieve Jagger

When an ex-catholic woman develops a sexual relationship with a vampire, she is forced to confront the memories that haunt her religious past. Struggling to deal with the familial trauma of her Catholic upbringing, hotel cleaner, Noelle, travels to the Isle of Bute. There, she meets a man who claims to be a vampire, and a relationship blooms between them based solely on confession. But as talk turns sacrilegious, and the weather outside grows colder, Noelle struggles to come to terms with her blasphemous sexuality. She becomes hounded by memories of her past: her mother’s affair with the local priest, and the part she played in ending it.

About the authors:

Claire Carroll lives in Somerset, UK, and writes experimental fiction about the intersection of nature, technology, and desire. She is also a PhD researcher at Bath Spa and Exeter Universities, where she explores how experimental writing – particularly short stories and prose-poetry – can reimagine how humans relate to the natural and non-human world.

Claire’s short stories and poetry have been published by journals including Gutter Magazine, perverse, Lunate Journal, The Oxonian Review, and Short Fiction Journal. In 2021, her short story My Brain is Boiling with Ideas was shortlisted for The White Review’s Short Story Prize, and her short story Cephalopod was the recipient of the Essex University & Short Fiction Journal Wild Writing Prize. Both pieces are taken from The Unreliable Nature Writer, Claire’s collection of linked short stories that examines the interconnection of climate anxiety, surviving late capitalism and dealing with personal loss.

Genevieve Jagger is a queer writer and witch from Scotland. Deeply involved in the literary community, Genevieve is a co-editor for Witch Craft Magazine. Genevieve’s writing can be found across the web at such locations as, X-RAY Magazine, Expat Press, and Body Fluids Lit Mag. Additional to writing, Genevieve works as a tarot reader, dealing fortunes across Glasgow. Genevieve was raised Catholic, which has very much influenced the themes of her debut novel, Fragile Animals. She is a Scorpio, a sinner, and quite distinctly autistic. You can most often find her feeding magpies and crying over the smallness of all things.