STORIE: EXPERIMENTS IN PROSE

Welcome back for a brand-new season of STORIE with four West Midlands-based writers lining up to bring you their new experiments in prose.

Featuring: ALAN BEARD, C.E. COLLINS, SAM HUNT & WINNIE M. LI.

ALAN BEARD has published two previous story collections, ‘Taking Doreen Out of the Sky’ (Picador, 1999) & ‘You Don't Have to Say’ (Tindal Street Press, 2010). He won the Tom-Gallon award. He has had stories broadcast on Radio 4 & in numerous magazines & anthologies, including London Magazine, Critical Quarterly, Malahat Review, three appearances in Best British Short Stories (1991, 2011 & 2024) & Best Microfiction 2024. He is a longstanding member of Tindal Street Fiction Group. His latest collection ‘Afternoon Drinking’ was published in 2025 by Floodgate Press.

C.E. COLLINS is a morris-dancing, shanty-singing former English teacher who writes. Frequently writing within folklore themes and imagery, her short stories have been published in journals across Europe, Australia and the US including Enchanted Conversation, Three Drops of the Cauldron, Mooky Chick, Cephalopress and Corvid Queen. She has written non-fiction pieces for ABC Canberra and the Bylines Network and was commended in the Rose Francombe Short Story Award by the Society of Women Writers in Tasmania. Her collection of subversive feminist folk tales ‘Forests of Silver, Forests of Gold: Tales of Crones, Maids and Mothers’ was published by Between These Shores Books in 2021. Her poems have also been published by Fawn Press, Seedlings Studio and Ink Sweat and Tears, among others. When not writing she is yomping the heath on Cannock Chase, muttering about her intense attachment to Place and her earnest attitude to love and fibre.

SAM HUNT is a writer from Walsall. He has been published in Floodgate Press' digital anthology 'The Middle of Everywhere' and the first issue of The Derwent Press. He is working on short stories and a novel about a young divorcee stranded in war-torn Amsterdam.

WINNIE M. LI is the author of three novels and Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham. A former film producer, her debut ‘Dark Chapter’ won The Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize, was nominated for an Edgar Award, and translated into ten languages. She has since adapted it for the screen. Her follow-up Complicit was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s Encore Award. Her most recent novel ‘What We Left Unsaid’ is out in paperback now. Winnie holds a PhD from the London School of Economics in Media and Communications and an honorary doctorate from the National University of Ireland.

TICKETS: Free

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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]