Storysmith, 236 North Street, Bristol, BS3 1JD (click here for a map)

We are stoked to welcome a truly singular literary talent to Bristol in September: Tice Cin will be with us to discuss her second novel Safe Spaces!

As longtime fans of Cin’s debut novel Keeping The House, we are especially excited to be hosting – expect an enlivening and perspective-altering chat about a book which is already gathering incredible praise. Tice will be in conversation with Ralf Webb.

Pre-order your copy of Safe Spaces (rrp £14.99)  for a special discounted price with your ticket, then collect on the night!

About Tice Cin

Tice Cin is an interdisciplinary artist and author from North London. Her debut novel Keeping the House (2021) received a Somerset Maugham Award and a London Writers Award, was a Guardian Book of the Year and was shortlisted for a British Book Award and the Desmond Elliot Prize among other accolades. Its accompanying mixtape having her named as one of Notion Magazines Ones to Watch. Her BBC Radio 4 documentary How Much Can You Say? (2024) won an Audio Production Award. Her work has been published and commissioned by Granta Magazine, London Magazine, Somerset House, Montblanc, Cartier and more. She is the founder of the interdisciplinary production company Neoprene Genie. Cin’s sophomore novel Safe Spaces will be published by Granta in September 2026. Cin lives between North London and North Cyprus.

Photo credit: Eric Aydin Barberini

About Safe Spaces

Our unnamed narrator survives in London on a combination of Universal Credit, music production and songwriting, trying to figure out what she wants from the city, and whether the city is prepared to give it to her. Navigating love affairs and blinded by grief following the death of her closest confidante, Safe Spaces is a portrait of the artist as a young musician. Of the DJ booths, green rooms and dance floors that shape her, and the worlds she finds herself in: be they the grime and electronic nightclubs, her Turkish-Cypriot family, the beauty parlour, the studio.

At once a songbook, a collection of aphorisms, a therapy transcript and a community journal, Safe Spaces is a work of extraordinary lyricism and candour, confirming Tice Cin as one of the foremost stylists of her generation. An intimate portrait of a community and a moving personal reckoning, it fearlessly asks: can the dream of a safe space ever be realised?

“Being able to capture so much raw emotion through incredible writing like this is a gift. This book conveys magical and visceral energy, that everyone should have the luxury of experiencing. Powerful shit” – Lola Young

“Safe Spaces makes a universe of London in all its glory, cruelty, poetry and bureaucracy. This is a book that evokes the shattering effect of trauma on prose, then painstakingly reconstructs a way to experience life, and talk about love. I saw in it a feat of outstanding energy to keep looking, keep listening and, feel everything in a time of grief, and yet somehow overstate nothing.” – Amber Hussain

“At first discordant, finally symphonic, Cin captures the heavy beat of her city’s blood, its healing music, in ways that recall and update the vivid prose-poetry of Clarence Major and Elizabeth Smart. This is an honest, intimate, grief-soaked work of experiential wonder.” – Tom Benn, author of Oxblood

“With arresting street smarts and vulnerability, Tice Cin reshapes London literature to ends previously unknown. We should all be grateful.” – Matthew Sperling

About Ralf Webb

Ralf Webb is the author of the poetry collections Rotten Days in Late Summer and Highway Cottage, as well as the nonfiction book Strange Relations: Masculinity, Sexuality and Art in Midcentury America, which was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. His poetry, fiction, criticism and memoir has appeared widely, including in the Guardian, Granta, and Tolka. He previously taught creative writing at Goldsmiths.

For venue access info, head to storysmithbooks.com/access .