February 8
Stockport Noir Crime Fiction Festival
About The Event
Via Serenity Booksellers:
Stockport Noir is the Northwest’s newest crime fiction festival. Taking place on Saturday, 8th February, at the beautiful Stockport Guildhall, Stockport Noir aims to bring the biggest names in crime fiction to their readers. Join us for a day of insight, stories and laughter with over 20 bestsellers and rising stars in the crime fiction community.
Doors will open at 9:15 a.m., and panels will start at 10 a.m. The last event will finish at 6 p.m.
Included in your ticket price:
- Access to all seven panel discussions and a chance to ask the authors those burning questions
- Book signings with your favourite authors
- Onsite bookshop, courtesy of Serenity Booksellers
- Tote bag stuffed with bookish goodies
- Access to the onsite bar
- Unlimited tea and coffee
- Free parking in the venue’s secure car park
Authors confirmed
Lauren Beukes · D.V. Bishop · Jo Callaghan · Natalie Chandler · M.W. Craven · Caroline England · Fiona Erskine · Guy Hale · Mari Hannah · Lesley Kara · Anna Mazzola · Chris McGeorge · Saima Mir · Sarah Moorhead · Dom Nolan · Judith O’Reilly · Rob Parker · T.M. Payne · Robert Rutherford · Adam Simcox · Catherine Wimpeney · Michael Wood · Trevor Wood
Further details, including the full line-up, panel timings, directions to Stockport Masonic Guildhall and hotel options, will be issued via email very soon. We really hope you can join us, and hope to welcome you to Stockport in February 2025.
Saturday 8th February 2025 9:15am – 6pm
Stockport Guildhall, 169 Wellington Road South, Stockport SK1 3UA
Brought to you in partnership with local author Chris McDonald and Serenity Booksellers
About The Child by Alistair MacKay:
After suffering a mental breakdown and losing his job at a New York advertising agency, a young man returns to Cape Town with his husband, Adrian. It’s 2018 and Cape Town is about to run out of water. This isn’t the homecoming they dreamed of, but the couple is determined to hold on to hope.
They are going to start a family by adopting a child. Someone to love, as the world around them falls apart. Maybe even a chance to atone for the sins of this country. But as the adoption gets underway, the narrator is forced to confront the childhood spectres he has spent a lifetime avoiding. While his marriage and sense of self begin to unravel, his life becomes increasingly enmeshed with that of their bubbly and outspoken domestic worker, Sibs, and her quiet young daughter, Buhle. And the more he tries to fix things, the worse they get.
Lies, violence and trauma endanger their hopes of a new beginning. And in the chaos of it all, he has to find his way back to Adrian, and to himself.
“Outrageously beautiful” – News24
“A testament to the power of story-telling” – Sunday Times
“An important, if not essential, voice of contemporary South Africa” – C.A. Davids
“Fresh, unflinching and propulsive” – S.J. Naudé
About the Authors:
Alistair Mackay is the author of The Child. His debut novel, It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way was long-listed for the British Science Fiction Association Awards, The Sunday Times Literary Awards, and was chosen by Brittle Paper as a Notable African Book of 2022. His writing explores queerness, marginalisation, social justice and climate change. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University, and an MA in Politics from Edinburgh University. He lives in Cape Town.
Lauren Beukes is the award-winning South African author of six novels, a short story collection and NYT-best-selling graphic novels, including Zoo City which won the Arthur C Clarke Award and the Kitschies Red Tentacle, The Shining Girls, now a major AppleTV show with Elisabeth Moss, and, most recently, the reality-bending mother-daughter-dreamworm novel, Bridge. Her work has been translated into 25 languages and she’s also worked in kids animation, TV scriptwriting and directed an award-winning documentary.