✍️ Signing a copy of HERE for a lovely mate at last night’s @flatpackfestival screening of @markfisherfilm Got in at 2:30am. Back at work by 10. But been buzzing all day. Quite probably one of my favourite nights in Birmingham, celebrating a writer who made me a writer, in the company of good friends. Thank my lucky stars ✨
🎤 Join us for the final event of our third season & hear from a line-up of Midlands-based STORIE alumni as they return to the mic to share short, sharp new EXPERIMENTS IN PROSE.
✍️ Featuring work from: JOSH ALLEN - ANIA BAS – SASHA BUTLER - CURTIS EBANKS FALCONER - ALAN KANE FRASER - TOM MAGUIRE - KATE MASCARENHAS - BETH PREECE
✍️ With STORIE co-curators: TAYLOR BURNS & CLIVE JUDD
This event is supported using public funding by ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND.
🎟️ Free
Please reserve your ticket via our Eventbrite page, link in bio.
🗺️ 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]
🌊 Beautiful bank-holiday trip to Shrewsbury with @maria.lomunno.judd yesterday & Milton’s version of Sabrina making an appearance on the bridge across her namesake. Almost five months since we shared mine for the very first time, & hopefully not too long before we see her again…
🌊
Sabrina fair
listen where thou art sitting
under the glassie, cool, translucent wave,
In twisted braids of Lillies knitting
the loose train of thy amber-dropping hair,
listen for dear honour’s sake,
goddess of the silver lake,
listen and save.
🌊
—and they are here. By a river. And on a river. This river called: Sabrina. And their eyes meet. After years. On this river so deep. So deep, deep, deep. Where the fish swim, shoal, feed. Where they leap, leap, leap…
🌊
♦ 🗣 STORIE: EXPERIMENTS IN PROSE FEAT: GRACE BEARD, LAURA BLAKE, JAKE TRELEASE & BEN WADDINGTON - THURSDAY 16TH APRIL 2026
🎤 Our Spring edition of STORIE flew by in a blink last week with four more writers joining our ever-expanding & illustrious list of alumni. Stories this month explored the specificities of place, tense formative experiences in Birmingham precincts, found notes & ephemera, & the devastating horrors of deportation.
✍️ Kudos to writers @gracie_vbrd@laurablakewrites@stillwalkinginsta & @jaketrelease for your fearless work at the mic. Do keep an eye out for more from all four, with Laura's debut novel GO HOME BIRDIE BROWN published this summer & Ben's collection DON'T PLEASE TELL ANYBODY hitting shelves shortly with a crowdfunder live now @dontpleasetellanybody
🎟️ We'll be back in June with a special summer edition of the night featuring a line-up of previously platformed Birmingham-based writers all returning to Kilder Bar with new short, sharp works of experimental prose.
🙏 Thank you as always to everyone for making April another sell-out STORIE. We'll see you again in June!
♦ TAYLOR BURNS & CLIVE JUDD
co-curators, STORIE
📸 @lyndon.lenses
🗣️ LET THERE BE LIGHT! (AND BOOKS…!)
📚 If you have paid Voce a visit over the last three weeks, you will have noticed that things have been a little darker than usual, with scaffolding covering the shutters that open on to Allison Street while key works have been taking place to the building’s roof..
But as of this morning, we are back to full beam, with light streaming in through the windows & illuminating the shop once again. With such a small space, it is these details that bring life to the place beyond the books we put on the shelves, & it feels very special to see the Spring sun once more during opening hours.
We’re here till 3pm as our Sunday standard, with some incredible new books having dropped in the last few days including our current Book of the Week: the continuation of Solve Balle’s time-loop masterpiece ON THE CALCULATION OF VOLUME.
If you’re in town, do drop by & check us out!
You can’t miss us now we’re visible once again…!
📚🙏❤️ Maria & Clive
🗣️ 📚 Announcing the full Spring/Summer 2026 events programme here at Voce Books, celebrating the very finest in independent publishing, literature in translation, cross-cultural exchange, bold new writing & a special launch event featuring our current Writer-in-Residence...
🎟️ For full details of all our events & to book/reserve tickets, please visit our Eventbrite page, link in bio.
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🗓️ Monday 13th April, 7pm
📚 Voce Books (Club) & Leyendo en Brum: Sánchez
🎟️ £12.99 w/ book
🗓️ Thursday 16th April, from 7pm at Kilder Bar
🎤 STORIE: feat. Grace Beard, Laura Blake, Jake Trelease & Ben Waddington
🎟️ Free
🗓️ Wednesday 22nd April, 7pm
📚 Balsam Karam: Event Horizon
🗣️ in conversation with Maria Lomunno Judd
🎟️ £4 standard / £12.99 w/ book
🗓️ Thursday 7th May, 7pm
📚 Ashley Hickson-Lovence: About to Fall Apart
🗣️ in conversation with Taylor Burns
🎟️ £4 standard / £12.99 w/ book
🗓️ Monday 11th May, 7pm
🇮🇹 Voce Italian Books (Club): Missitalia
🎟️ £18.99 w/ book
🗓️ Thursday 21st May, 6:30pm
✍️ Reading as a Writer with Taylor Burns
🎟️ Free
🗓️ Monday 1st June, 7pm
📚 Voce Books (Club): Susaki Paradise
🎟️ £12 w/ book
🗓️ Thursday 4th June, 7pm
📚 Matthew Cole: Unpaid
🗣️ in conversation with Dan Cave
🎟️ £4 standard / £16.99 w/ book
🗓️ Thursday 18th June, from 7pm at Kilder Bar
🎤 STORIE: Experiments in New Birmingham
🎟️ Free
🗓️ Wednesday 8th July, 7pm at The Night Owl
📚 Taylor Burns: Trav
🗣️ in conversation with Clive Judd
🎟️ £5 standard / £15 w/ book
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✉️ For questions about the programme, or to discuss access requirements please email [email protected]
🎤 Head to Kilder Bar for our Springtime STORIE session & hear new work from another 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.
🎟️ Free
Please reserve your ticket via our Eventbrite page, link in bio.
🗺️ 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]
