Literature Live: Beth Underdown and Kate Hamer at Martin Harris Centre

Sarah-Clare Conlon, Literature Editor
Writer Beth Underdown

Literature Live: Beth Underdown and Kate Hamer at Martin Harris Centre for Music & Drama, Manchester 6 March 2017 Tickets from £7.00 — Book now

Introduced by Jeanette Winterson, acclaimed author and Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at The University of Manchester, this Literature Live event will see writers Beth Underdown and Kate Hamer read from and discuss their new novels, both out this spring.

Listed as one to watch in The Observer‘s New Faces of Fiction 2017 feature, Beth Underdown is also on the books of the Centre for New Writing, starting there last year as a Lecturer in Creative Writing. Her debut novel, The Witchfinder’s Sister, is based on the witch-hunts orchestrated by Matthew Hopkins in seventeenth-century Essex, and is out in the UK and US with Penguin Random House. Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train, has described the book as “vivid and terrifying”.

Beth will officially launch The Witchfinder’s Sister on Friday 10 March at Waterstones Deansgate. That event starts at 6.30pm, costs £3 (redeemable against a copy of the book), and will include a reading, Q&A and book signing. More here. She will also be appearing at Verbose at Fallow Cafe on Monday 27 March (7.30pm, free), reading alongside Centre for New Writing colleagues past and present Susan Barker and Grace McAllen, and a selection of open mic performers. More here.

Back to the Literature Live event… Kate Hamer grew up in Pembrokeshire and has recently been awarded a Literature Wales bursary. Her bestselling novel The Girl in the Red Coat was a number-three Sunday Times bestseller and was shortlisted for – take a deep breath – the Costa First Book Award, the Bookseller Industry Awards Debut Fiction Book of the Year, the John Creasey New Blood Dagger and Wales Book of the Year. Her second novel The Doll Funeral is published by Faber & Faber.

Literature Live: Beth Underdown and Kate Hamer at Martin Harris Centre for Music & Drama, Manchester 6 March 2017 Tickets from £7.00 Book now

Where to go near Literature Live: Beth Underdown and Kate Hamer at Martin Harris Centre

Cafe at the Museum
Manchester
Café or Coffee Shop
The Cafe
at the Museum

Manchester Museum’s cafe is run by the people behind award-winning cafe Teacup Kitchen. The menu features home-baked cakes, the finest loose leaf teas and breakfast, as well as a wide selection of mains and meals for kids.

Manchester Academy music venue on Oxford Road Manchester.
Manchester
Music venue
Manchester Academy

The Manchester Academy is a mid size, modern warehouse venue adjacent to the University of Manchester Students’ Union. It lacks any architectural merit and has always been a difficult place…

Whitworth Park, Manchester
Manchester
Park
Whitworth Park

This 18-acre park opposite the Manchester Royal Infirmary provides a welcome patch of green in an otherwise densely populated and heavily used part of the city.

Manchester
Music venue
Manchester Academy 3

Brilliant venue for catching a touring band on the rise. The boringly titled Academy 3 or more interesting Hop and Grape, as it was once known, is a self contained…

Manchester
Shop
Want Not Waste

Want Not Waste is a student-run, not-for-profit zero waste shop operating out of Academy 1 at the University of Manchester Students’ Union.

Universally Manchester Festival 6-9 June 2024
Manchester
The University of Manchester

Celebrating its 200th year in 2024, The University of Manchester is the largest single-site university in the UK, and boasts come incredible cultural institutions, found on campus, across Manchester and…

Manchester
Bar or Pub
Big Hands

Big Hands is the one-time haunt of legendary Manchester band Elbow; it’s shabby, loud and dark, with a jukebox and excellent roof terrace.

Manchester
Bar or Pub
Kro Bar

Kro Bar, Manchester is an independent pub and music venue housed (somewhat ironically) in the former Temperance Society building.

What's on: Literature

Tom Branfoot. Photo Eleanor Hall, Museum of the Home
LiteratureWest Yorkshire
Poetry at the Dusty Miller

Poetry at the Dusty Miller is a now regular night with invited readers, organised by Carcanet-published Carola Luther and Judith Willson in the Coiners’ Room in the Mytholmroyd pub.

free entry
Okechukwu Nzelu
LiteratureHuddersfield
Polari at Huddersfield Literature Festival

Huddersfield Literature Festival is back with a packed programme this May, and this Polari-themed special caught our eye, featuring writers including Okechukwu Nzelu and Rosie Garland.

from £10.00

Culture Guides

Sextile
Music in the North

Open air clubs, new festivals and long-awaited gigs. The North West's live music scene is heating up this spring. 

A woman sits in a car with hands holding the steering wheel.
Cinema in the North

Vintage Alfred Hitchcock and a family friendly film festival are amongst our highlights this May.

Laura Ellen Bacon, Into Being, 2025. Photo © India Hobson, courtesy Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Exhibitions in the North

Willow weaving, textile collages, digital arts and ecology - all this and more in our exhibition top picks this month

Image by Jonathan Schofield.
Tours and Activities in the North

We've got many a good time in store this month as we round up the best walking tours, cultural classes and makers markets in the land.

Theatre in Manchester and the North
Theatre in the North

Dynamic dance, party-performance, high-energy stand-up and a site-specific show set in a pub. All this and more in our newest theatre guide.

Okechukwu Nzelu
Literature Events in the North

If it's inspiring, inclusive events and avant-garde, experimental afternoons you're after, look no further than live literature this spring – we've got you covered.