It’s Gone Dark Over Bill’s Mother’s author Lisa Blower, Alex Wheatle, BBC Radio 6 broadcaster Stuart Maconie and Mancunian author Adam Sharp, all contributors to Kit de Waal’s anthology, Common People, will read their work and discuss what it means to be working class.

Lisa Blower won The Guardian National Short Story Award in 2009, and was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award in 2013 and longlisted for The Sunday Times Short Story Award in 2018. Her fiction has appeared in The Guardian, Comma Press anthologies, The New Welsh Review, The Luminary, Short Story Sunday, and on Radio 4.

It’s Gone Dark Over Bill’s Mother’s is a fabulous collection of Lisa’s award-winning short stories, dominated by the working-class matriarch. From the wise, witty and outspoken Nan of ‘Broken Crockery’, who has lived and worked in Stoke-on-Trent for all of her 92 years, to happy hooker Ruthie in ‘The Land of Make Believe’, to sleep-deprived Laura in ‘The Trees in the Wood’, to young mum Roxanne in ‘The Cherry Tree’, she appears in many shapes and forms, and always with a stoicism that is hard to break down.

‘Lisa Blower confronts social class as a hugely neglected aspect of identity politics and visibility in contemporary literature.’ Professor Katy Shaw

The event will run from 3 pm – 4.15 pm Saturday 5th October at the Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama.

Presented in partnership with the Centre for New Writing and Creative Manchester.