Lancaster litfest has just announced that best-selling novelist and short story writer Michel Faber will be giving a rare reading at litfest, joining Niall Griffiths, Dave Simpson and Peter Wild for a night of fact and fiction on Saturday 17th October inspired by British band The Fall.
Ever been held hostage in a dressing room with your parents? Ever been thrown off the bus in the middle of a Swedish forest or abandoned at a foreign airport? Ever been asked to play at one of the UK’s biggest music festivals with musicians you’ve just met who are covered in blood, or taken part in a ‘recording session’ in a speeding Transit?
If so you’ve probably been in The Fall. Dave Simpson made it his mission to track down everyone who has ever played in Britain’s most berserk, brilliant group and in The Fallen: Searching for the Missing Members of The Fall, he uncovers a changing Britain, tales of madness and genius, and wreaks havoc on his personal life.
Talking about the experience, Dave is joined by Manchester-based Peter Wild, the editor of Perverted by Language: Fiction Inspired by the Fall, and contributors Niall Griffiths and Michel Faber.
Twenty-three writers chose a song by The Fall and used it as inspiration for a short story for the book that features mechanical ducks, shark women that taste of liquorice, and celebrity deer-culling.
Scottish-based novelist and short-story writer Michel Faber’s short story ‘Fish’ won the Macallan/Scotland on Sunday Short Story Competition in 1996 and is included in his first collection of short stories, Some Rain Must Fall and Other Stories (1998), winner of the Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award.
His first novel, Under the Skin (2000), was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and he has also won the Neil Gunn Prize and an Ian St James Award.
Other fiction includes The Hundred and Ninety-Nine Steps (1999), a novella, and The Courage Consort (2002), the story of an a cappella singing group. The Crimson Petal and the White (2002), is set in Victorian England and tells the story of Sugar, a 19-year-old prostitute. His collection of stories, The Apple (2006) continues the tale of some of the characters from this book.
His most recent books are Vanilla Bright Like Eminem (2007), a further short story collection, and The Fire Gospel (2008), a novel.
• Read an interview with Michel in January Magazine
• Fact and fiction inspired by the post-punk band The Fall starts at 9.30pm on Saturday 17th October at the Storey Creative Arts Centre, where most litfest events will take place this year. Tickets £7.50 (£6.00 concessions). More info here on the litfest web site