STORIE: EXPERIMENTS IN PROSE

Head to Kilder Bar for our Springtime STORIE session & hear new work from a scintillating line-up of writers including GRACE BEARD, LAURA BLAKE, JAKE TRELEASE, & BEN WADDINGTON.

GRACE BEARD is a writer and editor from Birmingham. She has worked in travel journalism for ten years and is currently the travel editor at Time Out. Outside of journalism, she's slowly but surely working on a collection of short stories, in the hopes to one day put her Creative Writing MA to use.

LAURA BLAKE is a Birmingham-based writer of English and Jamaican descent. She has a master’s degree in Literary Studies from Aberystwyth University. Her short fiction has been shortlisted for the Floella Benjamin Writing Prize, the Leicester Writes Short Story Competition, the London Independent Story Prize, the George Floyd Short Story Competition and the 4th Estate and Guardian 4thWrite Prize. Her debut novel, ‘Go Home Birdie Brown’ (HarperFiction), will be published in June 2026. Inspired by the Windrush Scandal, it follows an elderly woman’s fight to remain in the UK after she is labelled an illegal immigrant.

JAKE TRELEASE is a writer from South Shields who runs Tales About Nowt, a radio show about North East writing. He is currently working on a collection of short fiction about regional identity in post-industrial towns.

BEN WADDINGTON has lived in Moseley since 1994 and has been leading guided walks around Birmingham and beyond since 2006, researching and revealing the city's unremembered stories. He is the author of ‘111 Places in Birmingham that You Shouldn't Miss’, now in its second edition, has had three stories and essays published by Floodgate Press and several other works appearing elsewhere. A booklet of found, handwritten notes titled ‘Don’t Please Tell Anybody’ is scheduled to appear in April 2026.

TICKETS: Free

Please reserve your ticket here on our Eventbrite page.

KILDER BAR is located at 5 Shaw’s Passage, Digbeth with step-free access via the entrance on Shaw’s Passage.

For further enquiries about the event, please email [email protected]

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