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

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). He has also written on cinema for Little White Lies, Novara Media, & Vittles.

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. ‘Funny Queer’, a hand-sewn limited edition collection of stories, was published by the Aleph Press in 2021, & his short story, ‘Home Death’, was longlisted for the Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize 2019/20. His work has appeared in venues such as Hotel, Short Fiction, the Architectural Review, & Prototype (Anthology 4), & he is also the author of a critical book on the encounter between early twentieth-century literature & silent film. He lives in Manchester where he teaches in the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester.

ANDY HOWLETT is a Birmingham based artist, writer & filmmaker. He uses creative walking tactics to uncover lost histories & expose the weird underbelly of the everyday. He shoots, edits & narrates exploratory & playful video essays such as ‘Escarpment’ (2023), commissioned by Solihull Council, & the feature-length ‘Paradise Lost’ (2021) about the death of modernism which screened at architecture film festivals around the world. He’s a co-founder of Walkspace.

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.

TICKETS: Free

Please reserve your ticket here on our Eventbrite page.

KILDER BAR is located at 5 Shaw’s Passage, Digbeth with step-free access via the entrance on Shaw’s Passage.

For further enquiries about the event, please email storie@vocebooks.com

STORIE: EXPERIMENTS IN PROSE