Wendy Erskine is the award-winning author of two brilliant short story collections (Sweet Home and Dance Move)and we're absolutely thrilled to be welcoming Wendy to Stockport for the launch of her debut novel The Benefactors - a darkly funny and gripping story of three women from very different families who are brought together when their sons are accused of assaulting a young woman whose social standing they see as far below their own. Wendy will be in conversation with Terri White (Coming Undone) and the talk will be followed by an audience Q&A and booksigning.

Tickets are £5.00 each or £18.99 including a copy of The Benefactors. Light refreshments are included in the ticket price.

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

About the book:

Meet Frankie, Miriam and Bronagh: three very different women from Belfast, but all mothers to 18-year-old boys.

Gorgeous Frankie, now married to a wealthy, older man, grew up in care. Miriam has recently lost her beloved husband Kahlil in ambiguous circumstances. Bronagh, the CEO of a children's services charity, loves celebrity and prestige. When their sons are accused of sexually assaulting a friend, Misty Johnston, they'll come together to protect their children, leveraging all the powers they possess. But on her side, Misty has the formidable matriarch, Nan D, and her father, taxi-driver Boogie: an alliance not so easily dismissed.

Brutal, tender and rigorously intelligent, The Benefactors is a daring, polyphonic presentation of modern-day Northern Ireland. It is also very funny.

About the author:

Wendy Erskine is the author of two short story collections, Sweet Home and Dance Move. She was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize and the Republic of Consciousness Prize, longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award, and she received the Butler Literary Award and the Edge Hill Readers' Choice Award. She edited the art anthology well I just kind of like it. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she is a frequent broadcaster and interviewer, and works as a secondary school teacher in Belfast. The Benefactors is her debut novel.