Event type: Festival

Join #1 Sunday Times bestselling author Juno Dawson for a special online event celebrating the release of her explosive new YA novel, Survival Show.

Set inside the world’s most-watched – and most sinister – reality TV competition, Survival Show follows a teenage contestant who risks everything to expose the brutal regime behind the spectacle. In this live conversation, Juno will explore the themes driving the novel: fame and exploitation, poverty and power, media manipulation and the cost of visibility in a culture obsessed with performance.

Blending high-stakes dystopian drama with razor-sharp social commentary, the book reflects on a world where young women’s lives become content and entertainment masks control. Juno will discuss why dystopia feels so close to home, how reality TV mirrors political reality, and what it means to write boldly for young readers at a time of growing censorship and backlash.

As the author of global bestsellers including This Book Is Gay and Clean – works that have been both widely celebrated and repeatedly targeted in waves of LGBTQ+ book bans – Juno is able to bring insight and urgency to conversations about storytelling, representation and resistance.

Expect an incisive, politically charged discussion about culture, control and the power of fiction to challenge the systems shaping our lives.

Juno Dawson is a #1 Sunday Times bestselling novelist, screenwriter, journalist and columnist for Attitude magazine. Her books include the global bestsellers This Book Is Gay and Clean. She also writes for television and has multiple shows in development in both the UK and US.

Juno grew up in West Yorkshire, writing imaginary episodes of Doctor Who, before turning her talent to journalism, interviewing pop luminaries such as Steps and Atomic Kitten and writing a weekly serial in a Brighton newspaper. Her writing has appeared in Glamour, The Pool, Dazed and The Guardian, and she has appeared on Pointless Celebrities, BBC Woman’s Hour, ITV News, Channel 5 News, This Morning and Newsnight.

She lives in Brighton and is part of the queer cabaret collective Club Silencio. In 2014, she became a School & College Role Model for the charity Stonewall.

Date: Wednesday 20th MayTime: 7pmOnline eventTickets: £5

Join internationally acclaimed writer, historian and activist Rebecca Solnit for a special online event exploring her powerful new book- The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change. 

In this urgent and illuminating work, Solnit argues that while climate breakdown, democratic erosion and the rise of authoritarian politics dominate the headlines, they do not tell the whole story. Beneath the turbulence, she traces what she calls a “slow revolution”: the patient, persistent work of movements and communities reshaping the world in ways reactionary forces cannot tolerate. 

With clarity and moral force, Solnit explores how change often begins quietly before it becomes visible; how despair narrows our political imagination; and how the myth of inevitability serves those invested in the status quo. Drawing on decades of activism and feminist and climate justice thought, she reframes hope not as naïve optimism, but as a disciplined commitment to possibility. 

In this online conversation, Solnit will reflect on contested futures, collective action and why new worlds are already emerging – even in moments of backlash. 

A timely and galvanising event with one of the most influential public thinkers of our time. 

Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than twenty-five books, including Orwell’s Roses, which was shortlisted for the 2022 Orwell Prize for political writing, Recollections of My Non-Existence, which was longlisted for the 2021 Orwell Prize for Political Writing and shortlisted for the 2021 James Tait Black Award, The Faraway Nearby, Wanderlust, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, A Paradise Built in Hell and Hope in the Dark. She is also the author of Men Explain Things to Me and many essays on feminism, activism, social change, hope, and the climate crisis, and writes regularly for the Guardian. 

A longtime climate and human rights activist, she serves on the boards of Oil Change International and Third Act. Her newsletter of essays and analyses can be found at meditationsinanemergency.com 

Liverpool’s a laugh – but not always a happy place. Rhythms: Volume Three of the Diary of the Smyth Wailey’s brings that contradiction vividly to life, tracing a city shaped by movement, memory and the restless pull of the waterfront. Spanning generations, this powerful work weaves together intimate family stories with the wider social history of Liverpool, from the turmoil of the 1911 Transport Strike to the shifting tides of the twentieth century.

At its heart are lives marked by longing, loss and resilience: Nelly Flanagan’s desperate hope for a child amid war and hardship; decades later, her grandson John Paul confronting a very different dilemma in a changing world. These personal journeys echo the rhythms of a port city where global currents meet local lives, where dockers, seafarers and families navigate both solidarity and struggle.

Blending history, culture and lived experience, the book captures a Liverpool where art, music and rebellion are inseparable from everyday life. This launch event invites you to explore a city of contradictions—where sorrow and joy sit side by side, and where the past continues to pulse through the present.

Tony Wailey was born in Liverpool in 1947 and worked as a seafarer and construction worker before studying modern history, writing his thesis on Liverpool seamen. He later spent over 25 years advising mature students in universities and adult education before becoming a freelance writer.

He is the author of eight books, including novels and three poetry collections. His work explores the cosmopolitan nature of Liverpool as a maritime city, often focusing on migration, memory and family history. His recent books, Diary of the Smyth Waileys and Lights Bearing West examine the narratives of place and heritage, from the Liverpool waterfront to global settings shaped by the city’s seafaring connections.

Date: Tuesday 12th MayTime: 7pmVenue: Quaker Meeting House Liverpool, 22 School Lane, Liverpool, L1 3BT

Comma Press presents The Monster, Capital with Ian Carrington, Kiare Ladner and Sarah Schofield chaired by Ra Page, a bold new anthology from the acclaimed Theory Horror series, edited by David Sue and Ra Page.

Inspired by the writings of philosopher Mark Fisher and his concept of Capitalist Realism, this collection imagines capitalism as something monstrous — an abstract parasite, a zombie-maker, a force that consumes, reshapes and haunts our lives. Drawing on folk horror, body horror and the surreal, thirteen writers explore algorithmic obsession, parasocial addiction, vanishing communities and the eerie logic of the market.

A gothic reckoning with late capitalism — unsettling, urgent and darkly imaginative.

Ian Carrington is a Manchester writer who, as ‘Fat Roland’, has enjoyed a long performance career. He co-compered live literature night Bad Language, twice voted the UK’s best regular spoken word event. He has written features and columns for Electronic Sound magazine and fiction for Comma Press.

Kiare Ladner is the author of Nightshift, a novel about obsession and nocturnal lives (Picador 2021; HarperCollins 2022). Her short fiction has been anthologised, commissioned for radio and shortlisted in competitions, including the BBC National Short Story Award. She teaches and mentors writers in London. She grew up in South Africa and now lives in London. www.kiareladner.com

Sarah Schofield is an award-winning writer of short fiction. Her stories have appeared in several Comma Press anthologies, Best British Short Stories 2020 (Salt), Synaesthesia Magazine,  Morning Star, Woman’s Weekly, Hinterland and many others.  Sarah is a Creative Writing lecturer at Edge Hill University.Her debut collection Safely Gathered In was published by Comma Press in November 2021

Date: Wednesday 6th MayTime: 7pmVenue:  The Black-E, 1 Great George Street, Liverpool, L1 5EW,Tickets: £5