Date: 6 February 2022

Time: 2:30pm - 3:30pm

Venue: Online Zoom Event

Price: Free

Book: HERE

How do stories we tell about places affect the way we - and others - see them? How do people in different parts of the UK respond to novels set in ‘peripheral’ literary regions? And what role do local writing and reading communities play in this? 

As part of the Big Book Review, join writer Dr Lisa Blower (University of Wolverhampton, Common People Collective) and Belfast-based novelist Jan Carson (The Fire Starters) in conversation with Professor Sebastian Groes (University of Wolverhampton, Novel Perceptions project) as they explore the relationship between writing and place, regional identity, and the way both writers explore these questions in their fiction. 

Lisa Blower’s most recent novel Pondweed takes two childhood sweethearts on a road trip from Stoke-on-Trent to Wales, while Jan Carson’s new novel about community and conflict in small-town Ulster, The Raptures, is published in January 2022. 

Sebastian Groes will also reveal the reading habits of book-lovers in the Black Country and Northern Ireland, as indicated by the Novel Perceptions project’s research so far, and invite you to take part in our Big Book Review to tell us what you think really makes a good book.