An Evening with Rachel Bower

Join poet and author Rachel Bower, in conversation about her lyrical, gripping debut novel, It Comes From the River.

Date: Thursday, 23 April

Time: 7-8.30pm

Tickets: £7

Tickets can be purchased in the shop or here via Eventbrite.

Refreshments will be served.

Our Guest

Rachel Bower is an award-winning author and poet from Bradford. Her poetry, fiction and academic work has been widely published in journals and magazines, including The Guardian and The London Review. She has published three poetry collections: Bee, These Mothers of Gods, and Moon Milk. She co-edited the Family Lines poetry anthology with Simon Armitage and authored a non-fiction book on literary letters, Epistolarity in Literature.

Rachel won The London Magazine Short Story Prize (2019/20) and her stories have been listed for many other prizes, including The White Review Short Story Prize, the BBC Short Story Prize and the RSL V. S. Pritchett Short Story Prize. Her poems have also been shortlisted for many prizes, including the Gingko Poetry Prize and Michael Marks Environmental Poet of the Year (2024).

Rachel is a qualified Community Development Worker and has facilitated creative workshops for many years with a wide range of organisations, including schools, youth services, children’s centres, the Poetry School, Poet in the City, the British Library, the University of Leeds and more.

She holds a PhD in English from the University of Cambridge and is a Trustee of Ilkley Literature Festival.

Rachel is also a beekeeper, cold water lover, hybrid fitness enthusiast and the founder of Wild Writes, where she runs workshops which encourage people to connect with nature and creativity.

About It Comes From the River:

The three women flinch: feel something pass outside. A reek of singed fur, scorching damp. Flaming eyes. A creature. It knows these women. They feel its wanting.
From the river it comes.
To the river it always returns.
Alex is trying to hold her growing family together with a husband who is becoming more and more difficult to keep happy. Lauren hopes that the new man in her life might present a fresh start for her and her two boys. And Nancy's son has moved her into a care home where she feels entirely out of place, longing for her lost dog while dreaming of her own escape.
But there is something else at play here. Something lurking in the water or at the end of an unlit street; a shadow in a bag of strangers' clothing; a chorus of voices calling in the distance.
As each woman's world spirals from her grasp, they feel it getting closer, revealing the truth of what binds them together, and what must be done to set each of them free...

Reviews:

'A gritty and captivating tale of resilience, violence and the power of female solidarity.' (Harper's Bazaar)

'This unflinching debut builds relentlessly to a heart-stoppingly dramatic climax.' (Daily Mail)

'Haunting, lyrical and thoroughly gripping.' (Clare Fisher)

'Thrilling, poetic, dark and alive - a shimmering gemstone of a debut.' (Alice Ash)

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