STORIE: EXPERIMENTS IN WORKING-CLASS PROSE

We are pleased to announce the full line up for our special edition EXPERIMENTS IN WORKING CLASS PROSE event hosted as part of the BIRMINGHAM LITERATURE FESTIVAL 2025, selected from our first ever open submissions call:

UTTARAN DAS GUPTA is an Indian writer & journalist who lives and works in New Delhi, Birmingham & Goa. He has published a novel ‘Ritual’ (2020) & a book of poems, ‘Visceral Metropolis’ (2017). In 2016, he was awarded a writers’ residency by Sangam House, India, & in 2027, he will be at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. At present, he is working on a PhD in Media and Culture Studies at Birmingham City University in the UK.

SOPHIE HUCKFIELD is an artist, writer & designer. They draw on archival and research materials to co-produce multidisciplinary artworks which move between writings, sculpture, video & audio-visual installations. Recent writing includes ‘OUTWORK’ (2023) a collaborative project & book on the history of women Printworkers in West Bromwich. Currently, they are artist in residence at New Art Gallery Walsall & a fellow at Stanley Picker Gallery in Kingston. They perform & DJ as Lady Ludd.

SAM HUNT is originally from North Walsall, grew up in the nearby village of Great Wyrley, & has lived in Bloxwich most of his adult life. His twenties were a dysfunctional period in which he wrote poetry as an outlet. When he began living healthier in his early thirties he took to writing fiction, initially inspired by the likes of Rachel Cusk & Irvine Welsh.

JULIE IRIGARAY is a French Basque writer. Her poetry pamphlet ‘Whalers, Witches and Gauchos’ was published by Nine Pens in 2021 & her poetry has been featured on BBC Radio 4. Her poems, articles & translations have appeared in over sixty publications across the world & her poems have won or been finalists in twenty-four poetry competitions, including The Bridport Poetry Prize 2025.

SHARONA KENWRICK is a writer living in Birmingham (the city she grew up in, left as a teenager, then returned to years later to study a Creative Writing MA at the University of Birmingham). Whilst writing the creative portfolio for her dissertation, the city inspired memories of her youth in tower blocks & music venues, themes that began to influence her work. She expanded this into a collection of short stories about music culture, set in working-class Birmingham & is currently looking at independent presses for publication of her manuscript, ‘The Noise Made by People’.

This event will be hosted by STORIE co-curators TAYLOR BURNS & CLIVE JUDD.

TICKETS: Free

Please reserve your ticket here on our Eventbrite page.

KILDER BAR is located at 5 Shaw’s Passage, Digbeth with step-free access via the entrance on Shaw’s Passage.

For further enquiries about the event, please email c3RvcmllIHwgdm9jZWJvb2tzICEgY29t

Also check out other Arts events in Birmingham, Literary Art events in Birmingham, Workshops in Birmingham.