EDITH HOLLER - Edward Carey in conversation

We're deligted to be welcoming Edward Carey to Manchester for the launch of his brilliant new book EDITH HOLLER - a delightfully macabre and darkly funny story of a young woman trapped in a ramshackle English playhouse – and the mysterious figure who threatens its very survival.

Doors: 6.30, starts 6.45

Tickets start from £4.00. Edith Holler will also be available to purchase on the night and Edward will be signing copies after the talk. If you would like a signed copy but cannot make the event, please contact us on 0161 274 3331 or [email protected] and we can arrange this for you.

About the book:

Norwich, 1901. Edith Holler spends her days among the eccentric denizens of the Holler Theatre, warned by her domineering father that the playhouse will literally tumble down if she should ever leave.

Fascinated by tales of the city she knows only from afar, young Edith decides to write a play of her own about Mawther Meg, a monstrous figure said to have used the blood of countless children to make the local delicacy, Beetle Spread. But when her father suddenly announces his engagement to a peculiar woman named Margaret Unthank, Edith scrambles to protect her father, the theatre, and her play – the one thing that’s truly hers – from the newcomer’s sinister designs.

Teeming with unforgettable characters and illuminated by Carey’s trademark illustrations, Edith Holler is a surprisingly modern fable of one young woman’s struggle to escape her family’s control and craft her own creative destiny.

About the author:

Edward Carey is a writer and illustrator who was born in North Walsham, Norfolk, England, during an April snowstorm. He is the author of the novels Observatory Mansions and Alva and Irva: the Twins Who Saved a City, and of the YA Iremonger Trilogy, which have all been translated into many different languages and all of which he illustrated. His 2018 novel Little has been published in 20 countries. His novella The Swallowed Man, set inside the belly of an enormous sea beast, was published in 2022.

He has written plays for the National Theatre of Romania and the Vilnius Small State Theatre, Lithuania. In England his plays and adaptations have been performed at the Young Vic Studio, the Battersea Arts Centre, and the Royal Opera House Studio. He has collaborated on a shadow puppet production of Macbeth in Malaysia, and with the Faulty Optic Theatre of Puppets.

He has lived in England, France, Romania, Lithuania, Germany, Ireland, Denmark, and the United States. He currently lives in Austin, Texas.

Host or Publisher Blackwell's Manchester