Perfect for fans of Italo Calvino, and Jorge Luis Borges, Necrosmologies is a collection of speculative fiction that that reimagines industrial process and the experiences of working-class families, centring on the Black Country in the English West Midlands. Set in a series of overlapping realities: worlds dealing with environmental catastrophe; an alternative reality where magical creatures perform the work of industrialisation, the real town of Dudley and its subterranean mirror-world, Yeldud; an alternative political history, where Labour leader Mary Macarthur almost becomes British Prime Minister in the 1920s and a 1970s Birmingham where workers catch space-ferries to quarries on the moon. Anthony Cartwright will be in conversation with Liam Harrison (Tolka). Tickets cost £7 and include a glass of wine or a soft drink. Presented by bookhaus. Anthony Cartwright’s fiction about working-class Black Country families has been listed for a number of literary prizes, adapted for radio and enjoy ongoing success in Italian translation. He teaches on the Creative & Professional Writing Programme at UWE, Bristol, having previously worked as a English teacher in East London and as a writer-in-residence in schools on the First Story programme. Necrosmologies continues his exploration of place, social class, history and identity through fiction in a newer, speculative form. His first novel The Afterglow won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and James Tait Black Memorial Award. His work has been twice-listed for both the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Gordon Burn Prize.

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