Three authors of some of the hottest debut novels of the year talk to Julia Armfield about becoming a novelist in 2024, the stories they’ve chosen to tell, and what the future holds.
The panellists are:
Kaliane Bradley is a British-Cambodian writer and editor based in London. Her short stories have appeared in Electric Literature, Catapult, Somesuch Stories and The Willowherb Review, among others. She was the winner of the 2022 Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Prize and the 2022 V. S. Pritchett Short Story Prize. The Ministry of Time, described by Eleanor Catton as ‘outrageously brilliant’, is her first novel.
Oisín McKenna was born in Dublin and lives in London. He was awarded the Next Generation Bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland to write Evenings and Weekends, his debut, which has been awarded a 2022 London Writers Award. He has written and performed four theatre shows, including ADMIN, an award-winning production at Dublin Fringe 2019, and has written for outlets including the Irish Times on issues such as gentrification and the alienation of Dublin’s youth.
Gianni Washington's writing has been published in The Fat City Review online, LitroNY.com, the horror anthology Brief Grislys and read aloud on the Great American Folk Show. She is a monthly contributor to the Chicago Review of Books and holds a PhD in Creative Writing from The University of Surrey. She worked for many years as a bookseller in London and is currently based in North Carolina. Flowers From the Void is her debut novel.
The evening will be hosted by Julia Armfield. She is the author of salt slow, a collection of short stories, which was longlisted for the Polari Prize 2020 and the Edge Hill Prize 2020. Her debut novel, Our Wives Under The Sea, won the Polari Prize 2023 and was shortlisted for the Foyles Fiction Book of the Year Award 2022. Her much-anticipated second novel, Private Rites, is released this summer.
This event will be followed by an audience Q&A and book signing. Doors open from 6:45pm.
