Jenn Ashworth's first novel, A Kind of Intimacy, is published by Arcadia books. As well as writing she works in a prison library, collects cacti, tells lies, loses cats, fails to wash up and spies on the neighbours in Preston, Lancashire, where she has lived, on and off, since she was born.
The Echoes (2024) Evie Wyld "I loved this book. Evie Wyld moves effortlessly through times, places and people with a relentless, brutal, compassionate attention. I am in awe of her control over detail, emotion, and plot - and the way she shows us how we understand the personal through the local and the historical."
Calypso (2024) Oliver K Langmead "It's been a long time since I've read a book so bold and lush, so skilled at making and remaking vibrant and richly imagined worlds, and yet so attentive to vulnerability - it was such an ultimately tender read."
The Gospel of Orla (2023) Eoghan Walls "The Gospel of Orla is an astonishing feat of characterisation and storytelling. The prose is both earthy and sparkling and the story--equal parts bravado and vulnerability--is told with both wit and tenderness. Everyone should read this."
The Perfect Golden Circle (2022) Benjamin Myers "A strange, magical extraordinary book. It's so atmospheric, so strange and affecting. I don't think I've ever read anything quite like it before, and I'm not sure how Myers has made it work, but he has - I was totally gripped by this."
Here Again Now (2022) Okechukwu Nzelu "Hooked me from the very beginning. There's such a great respect and dignity at play in this writing - we're never allowed to forget that the painful blunderings of inexpertly loving can lead us, almost in spite of ourselves, to the place we are supposed to be."
The Woodcock (2021) Richard Smyth "The world Smyth evokes with his vibrant prose leaps off the page – every character lives and breathes, and beneath its ordinary surface, 1920s Gravely teems with beauty, complexity and mystery."
Alligator and Other Stories (2020) Dima Alzayat "Alligator and Other Stories is heartfelt, heartbreaking and heart-mending. It's also razor sharp on the shifting layers of history, family, faith, gender, culture and language that make up that strange thing we call 'identity.' An important, necessary book."
The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart (2017) Holly Ringland "Rich, vibrant and alive with the messy, sometimes violent, song of human connection. Holly Ringland is a writer to watch out for."
(b.1982)
