Booktober: University of Birmingham Creative Writer's Showcase

Enjoy an evening with the writers of UoB.

The University of Birmingham Department of Film and Creative Writing is the home of a fleet of published authors across forms and genres. As part of Booktober, the department presents an evening of readings from some of their teaching creative writers. Join us for a relaxed evening enjoying a series of latest works!

Ruth Gilligan is a bestselling author and journalist who joined the University of Birmingham in September 2014. She has published five novels to date, including most recently The Butchers which won the 2021 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize (awarded to the book that best evokes 'the spirit of a place').

Anna Metcalfe is a novelist and author of short stories whose work has been widely anthologised as well as being shortlisted for the Sunday Times Short Story Award. Her debut novel, Chrysalis was published in 2023 and the same year she was named as one of the best young British novelists by Granta Magazine in their once per decade list.

Bohdan Piasecki is a poet and translator from Poland based in Birmingham. A committed performer, he has taken his poems from the upstairs room in an Eastbourne pub to the main stage of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, from underground Tokyo clubs to tramways in Paris. He was awarded the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem: Performed in 2023, the category’s inaugural year.

Luke Kennard is a poet and novelist whose seventh poetry collection, Notes on the Sonnets won the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2021. He joined the university in 2008 at the beginning of its creative writing program.

This event is presented as part of Booktober at The Exchange. Running throughout October 2024, the programme celebrates the joy of creative writing and reading in all its forms and will be bursting with activities, events and opportunities to explore the magic of literature.