Date/Time: Thursday 16 November 2023, 7pm to 8pm

Venue: Culture Lab, Newcastle University

‘I was blown away by Fire Rush - an exceptional and stunningly original novel by a major new writer... her mesmerising, imaginative and incantatory writing leaves us swaying to the bass of the visceral rhythms she so powerfully describes. By the end of the novel, I felt charged and changed and already longed to reread it.’ Bernardine Evaristo

Jacqueline Crooks was born in Jamaica and grew up in 70s and 80s Southall, part of London’s migrant community. She has a First-Class degree in Social Policy and an MA in Creative & Life Writing. She works in the community sector with Black and minoritised grassroots charities. Her stories have been longlisted and shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, the BBC National Short Story Award and she was named as a 2023 top ten debut author by the Observer. Fire Rush is set in 1970s and 1980’s London, Bristol, and Jamaica and is about the role of women in the underground world of dub reggae. It was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2023.

Juliana Mensah is a Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at York University. Her debut novel, Castles from Cobwebs, was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize in 2021 and won the inaugural NorthBound Book Award in 2019. Her short stories have appeared in edited collections, including The Book of Newcastle (Comma Press, 2020), New Narratives for the North East (New Writing North, 2021), and Test Signal (Dead Ink and Bloomsbury, 2021) among others. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Newcastle University.

Free event, and all welcome.

Culture Lab is building number 7 on Newcastle University's map of the campus