We’re delighted to be hosting the launch of Adam Farrer’s debut book COLD FISH SOUP. Winner of the 2021 NorthBound Book Award, it’s a clear-eyed, unsentimental and often funny account of small-town life, from male mental health and economic decline to community, swimming and burlesque-dancing pensioners. Adam will be in conversation with Jenn Ashworth.

About the book:

Before Adam Farrer’s family relocated to Withernsea in 1992, he’d never heard of the Holderness coast. The move represented one thing to Adam: a chance to leave the insecurities of early adolescence behind. And he could do that anywhere. What he didn’t know was how much he’d grow to love the quirks and people of this faded Yorkshire resort, in spite of its dilapidated attractions and retreating clifftops.

While Adam documents the minutiae of small-town life, he lays bare experiences that are universal. His insights on family, friendship, male mental health and suicide are revealed in stories of reinvention, rapacious seagulls, interdimensional werewolves, burlesque dancing pensioners, and his compulsion towards the sea.

Cold Fish Soup is an affectionate look at a place and its inhabitants, and the ways in which they can shape and influence someone, especially of an impressionable age. Adam’s account explores what it means to love and be shaped by a place that is under threat, and the hope – and hilarity – that can be found in community.

About the author:

Adam Farrer is a writer and editor who has per­formed at festivals and events including Manchester Literature Festival and the Northern Lights Writers Conference. His work has been published in the anthology Test Signal and he edits the creative non-fiction journal The Real Story, as well as teaching writing workshops. Cold Fish Soup is his first book.

Jenn Ashworth was born in 1982 in Preston. She studied English at Cambridge and since then has gained an MA from Manchester University, trained as a librarian and run a prison library in Lancashire. She now lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Lancaster. She is the author of five novels including A Kind of Intimacy, Cold Light and Fell. Her latest novel Ghosted: A Love Story was shortlisted for The Portico Prize. She has also written a memoir, Notes Made While Falling. She lives in Lancaster with her husband, son and daughter.

Doors: 18.30, event starts: 18.45.

Tickets are £3.00 or free when pre-ordering a copy of the book. COLD FISH SOUP will also be available to purchase on the night and Adam 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 manchester@blackwell.co.uk and we can arrange this for you.