Meet the Authors - Night Time Economy
8/11/20247 min read
Introduction
Welcome to our latest post! Today, we’re excited to introduce you to the talented group of writers behind our anthology Night Time Economy. Each contributor brings a unique voice and perspective about the Midlands and we are lucky to have so many talented writers in our region!
They are:
Josh Allen
Josh Allen is a Birmingham based writer, journalist and contemporary historian. He produces Walk Midlands, a website of day walks across the English Midlands, doable without a car, and is writing a book about walking across the West Midlands.
Anjem Anwar
Anjem, a Brummie, grew up on books and Bollywood. Through his prose, he hopes to champion South Asian voices, joy, and culture. A lapsed scientist with an MSc in toxicology, Anjem is a teacher to little humans. He conjures up fantastical short stories while drinking copious amounts of coffee.
https://www.instagram.com/amare_liber/
Jamila Barry
Jamila Barry is an Irish Brummie Muslim mother of grown sons who likes writing, cooking, and cluttering up the house with her own paintings. She writes for herself, mainly, about craving for belonging, stability and a sense of home.
Alan Beard
Alan Beard has published two story collections, Taking Doreen Out of the Sky (Picador, 1999) and You Don't Have to Say (Tindal Street Press, 2010). He has had numerous stories and flashes in magazines and anthologies, most recently in Leon Literary Magazine, trampset, Outside Left and Best Microfiction 2024.
Patrick Boyden
Pat Boyden’s formative years were spent in the West Midlands. He has since led a peripatetic life and is currently happily settled in a remote part of Greece. ‘The Fox’ is his second story to be accepted by Floodgate, and he wishes one of his unpublished novels could be similarly successful.
James Brogden
James Brogden is a Birmingham-based author of horror and dark fiction, and occasional Australian. His stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and his novel 'The Plague Stones' was short-listed for the August Derleth award in 2021. He is owned by three cats who do not approve of this nonsense.
Esme Brown
Esme Brown is a writer and carer living and working in Birmingham. She has never intentionally squashed a slug.
Taylor Burns
Taylor Burns' first novel is forthcoming from Zer0 Books in 2025. He also co-curates STORIE — a bi-monthly night of experimental prose — in conjunction with Voce Books. He lives in Birmingham and is working on a second novel, among other things.
https://www.instagram.com/taylor___burns/
Sasha Butler
Sasha Butler is a Birmingham-based writer. Her first novel As Soft as Dreams was shortlisted for the Cheshire Novel Prize 2022 and the Bath Novel Award 2022. She is represented by Bell Lomax Moreton literary agency and is currently working on her second novel.
https://www.instagram.com/sashabutler_writes/
Liz Churchill
Liz Churchill lives in Birmingham. She writes short stories and runs Mo Stories a live fiction night. She's part of Writing West Midlands Room 204 and The London Library Emerging Writers Programme. Her writing's been published online by The Mechanics' Institute Review and she won the Scratch Books A4 Competition.
https://www.instagram.com/lizrose8/
Helen Cross
Helen’s stories are published in many magazines and anthologies, including most recently The Manchester Review, Popshot and Digbeth Stories. She is the author of four novels, including BAFTA-winning My Summer of Love and has written audio drama for twenty years, most recently two seasons of the acclaimed BBC podcast drama series English Rose.
https://linktr.ee/helenxwriter
RM Francis
R. M. Francis is a Creative Writing lecturer at the University of Wolverhampton. He has produced novels, Bella and The Wrenna, poetry collection Subsidence, waybook The Chain Coral Chorus, and short fiction collection Ameles / Currents of Unmindfulness. His academic work has appeared in international journals and edited collections.
Alan Kane Fraser
Alan Kane Fraser is a writer from Birmingham. His stage play Random Acts of Malice won the inaugural Derek Lomas New Writing Award. He had a short story included in Digbeth Stories (Floodgate Press, 2023) and his debut novel The Muse of Hope Falls was published by Lightning Books (2023).
https://www.instagram.com/_alanfraser/
Kirsten Handley
Kirsty grew up in Worcestershire and went to Aston University, a big inspiration for this piece. She writes flash fiction and short stories and is delighted to feature in this anthology. Her short story Body Count featured in the Digbeth Stories collection and her flash fiction piece Ice appeared in the 2020 Flash Fiction Journal. She has also featured in Birmingham and Moseley Writers Group Anthologies. Kirsty works in finance with too many spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations and therefore loves using writing as an outlet for her creativity.
Andy Howlett
Andy Howlett is a Birmingham-based artist and filmmaker. He’s interested in the power of collective walking to re-map and re-enchant our public spaces. His walks and films have been commissioned by Flatpack Festival, Ikon Gallery, Solihull Council, Creative Black Country and Voce Books/Influx Press. He is co-founder of walking-art collective Walkspace. If you do walk your own neighbourhood skull the collective would love to hear about it.
Sadie Kaye
Sadie Kaye is a transgender woman, a poet, an artist and a feminist. She writes poetry and prose, much of it about her life as a trans woman. She runs a spoken word group called Birmingham VOICES and performs her works and exhibits her paintings in and about Birmingham, UK.
Richard Lakin
Richard Lakin is a former police officer and journalist now working in the civil service. His work has been published in the Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Structo and Londonist and others. He's based in Staffordshire.
http://richlakin.wordpress.com/
Liz Kershaw
Liz Kershaw is a prize-winning writer of short fiction. Publications include short stories and a novella (Mantle Lane Press), the Historical Writers’ Association short story anthologies, and Our Man in the Moone (prose, drama and animation). She is a member of Writing West Midlands and Tindal Street Fiction Group.
Zahira P. Latif
Zahira is a British Pakistani Muslim woman from a working-class background with a passion for writing. Her essays have been featured in national and international literary journals, as well as in various anthologies. She is currently working on her first book, a polemical critique of the implications of capitalism on well-being. You can find her on X
Catherine Lockhart
Catherine Lockhart is a freelance writer, author and poet based in the West Midlands. Her poetry has been archived in Bishopsgate Institute as part of a Switchboard’s 50th Anniversary competition, and her poem ‘Shrink’ is published in Heroica’s first anthology in September 2024.
Tom Maguire
Tom Maguire is a writer and DJ who lives in North Birmingham with his partner, Alison. His fiction appears in Digbeth Stories by Floodgate Press, Grim & Gilded and Crow & Cross Keys. His non-fiction appears in Blue Labyrinths. He met the Banshee in a smoking area in November 2022.
https://www.instagram.com/tmdubz1/
Siobhan Maher
After a decade designing jewellery (in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter, natch), Siobhan returned to her writing roots and now runs Authology, a brand storytelling studio. Halfway through an MA Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham, she is also tackling her first novel. Siobhan writes about art, motherhood and memory.
Mez Packer
Mez Packer is an Assistant Professor at Coventry University and teaches on various writing programmes. She has published two novels, numerous short stories and articles. Her debut, Among Thieves, was nominated for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and Authors’ Club First Novel Award. She also works as an editor and mentor.
Cheryl Powell
Expect a dark read from Cheryl, a Worcestershire writer published by Coffin Bell, Litro, Spelk, Storgy, Reflex Fiction, The Bangalore Review, Boudicca Press, The Mechanics Institute Review, and Arachne Press, among others. Two of her stories have been performed by the Liars' League. She is a wannabe cold water swimmer.
Chloe Sell
Chloe Sell is an American writer living in Solihull with her husband Ben and Bengal cat named Minnie. She dreams of lavender white mochas and world peace.
https://www.instagram.com/chloelaurennewriter/
Matthew Storer
Matthew Storer was born in 1976 and spent his childhood in Rugby, Warwickshire. He read English Literature at the University of Sheffield before attending Nottingham Law School. For the last twenty years he has lived and worked in Birmingham. He is a big fan of trees in urban environments.
Eleanor Trigg
Eleanor is from Birmingham. She finds much more joy in writing stories driven by history, science, or myth, than she does writing about herself. She studied architecture and conservation at university and works as a Timber Frame Designer. Her words have been published in Lucent Dreaming. She is working on her first novel.
Lynne Voyce
Lynne Voyce's fiction and non-fiction has been widely published. She has won and been placed in many competitions, among them Legend, Flash 500 and the Calderdale Short Story Prize. In 2019, she was included in Common People: An Anthology of Working Class Writers (ed. Kit de Waal). Lynne teaches English and lives in Bearwood with her family.
Ben Waddington
Ben Waddington is the author of 111 Places in Birmingham That You Shouldn't Miss, now in its second edition. He is the director of Still Walking, a Birmingham-based festival of guided tours and walking events, and city organiser for Birmingham's. Tipping Point is an extract from his forthcoming novel Material Girl.
https://www.instagram.com/stillwalkinginsta/
Ian Whatley
Ian was born in Hall Green and now lives in South Carolina. His fiction has appeared in Lost and Found Times, 6S Review and The Legendary. To support his writing habit, he has twenty-one patents on athletic footwear technologies and produces coaching videos for race walkers. His life is even stranger than his stories.
Charles Wilkinson
Born in Digbeth, Charles Wilkinson, a former full member of the Tindal Street Fiction Group, has published five collections of short stories, four of them with Egaeus Press. His pamphlet Ag & Au, partly about the Jewellery Quarter, appeared from the Birmingham-based press Flarestack Poets.
https://www.instagram.com/charles_wilkinson_author/
A mighty bunch, we're sure you agree!