We're delighted to be welcoming Hazel Barkworth and Rozie Kelly to Stockport to dicuss their latest books The Drownings - a provocative and suspenseful campus novel about obsession, influence and the power of young women - and Kingfisher - an award-winning debut exploring grief, power, desire and the tangles in between that make up a life. Hazel and Rozie will be in conversation with Lara Williams (Supper Club, The Odyssey)

Tickets are £5.00 each, £10.99 including a copy of The Drownings or Kingfisher, or £20 for a ticket and a copy of both books (saving you £1.98 off the RRP) Light refreshments are included in the ticket price.

Event starts at 6:30pm (doors at 6pm)

About the books:

The Drownings by Hazel Barkworth

SOMETIMES YOU MUST CHOOSE TO PLAY WITH FIRE...

On a remote university campus in the north of England, famed for the wild waters that surround it, two cousins arrive for the new term.

Zara wants to be at the centre of everything Leysham has to offer.

Serena, an ex-champion swimmer, struggles to find her place.

When they meet Jane, a beguiling and ambitious postgrad obsessed with historic local witch trials, both are drawn in by her desire to expose Leysham's dark legacy - a centuries-old culture of violence among the privileged elite.

As protests flare across the campus, a simmering rivalry takes hold between the cousins. But when cracks start to appear in Jane's stories, everything spirals out of control...

Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly

She smelled like jasmine. No, not exactly. She smelled like the earth beneath a jasmine plant on a hot day.

Most of us are poets, she said. It's just a question of how it comes out.

When a creative writing academic becomes infatuated with his colleague – the poet – it is not long before it begins to threaten his relationship with his partner, Michael. Michael is beautiful. Michael is safe. But the poet is everything he isn't; she has everything he wants.

While he writes about steel and sex, she dreams about the movements of swallows. While he tends to his budding career, she writes from her big, white house in the woods. As he slips between his old life and this new one, his fixation grows into something more powerful. The poet, his Kingfisher, is his sole focus. He is hypnotised.

But when simultaneous illnesses threaten to destroy the precarious reality he clings to, he's forced to question what he can and cannot take from someone. This is a novel about grief, power and desire – and the tangles in between that make up a life.

About the Authors:

Hazel Barkworth  grew up in Stirlingshire and North Yorkshire before studying English at Oxford. She then moved to London where she spent her days working as a cultural consultant, and her nights dancing in glam rock clubs. Hazel is a graduate of both the Oxford University MSt in Creative Writing and the Curtis Brown Creative Novel-Writing course. Her debut novel Heatstroke was published by Headline in 2020. She now lives in York with her partner.

Rozie Kelly is a prose writer based in West Yorkshire. After reading English Literature and Creative Writing she moved to Hebden Bridge, where she works for the Arvon Foundation, hosting creative writing courses. She was shortlisted for the PFD Queer Fiction Prize 2023 and is one of the eight participants in the inaugural Prototype Development Programme, which offers extended support and career development to emerging writers and artists. She won the 2024 NorthBound Book Award for Kingfisher, her debut novel.