Sarah Schofield book launch at Ormskirk Library

Join author Sarah Schofield as she reads from her brand-new collection, Safely Gathered In, published by Manchester’s Comma Press. Sarah is a lecturer in Creative Writing at Edge Hill University, up the road from Ormskirk Library, and this event is hosted by Lancashire Library Service.

Sarah Schofield’s stories have been widely published including in the Best British Short Stories 2020 (Salt) and The New Abject: Tales Of Modern Unease, part of Comma’s Modern Horror series.

The long-awaited debut from the Lancashire-based writer is very now, bringing together short stories with a touch of the uncanny – perfectly timed as the nights draw in. Here’s a little on the fright fest… “A woman grows increasingly annoyed by her husband’s emails, offering advice and reminders even months after his death… A taxidermist dreams of preserving one of his clients after she takes him out for a coffee… A grieving nurse is troubled by her daughter’s fascination with The Iron Lady…”

Described as “powerful and touching”, Safely Gathered In delves into the idea of nature versus nurture and probes at the heart of what forms us and what we, in turn, form. With hallmarks of genre fiction, particularly science fiction, the stories expose the spaces that words often fail to reach and examine how objects – both manmade and natural – can reflect the darkest manifestations of grief and disconnection. “From the child acting out a family betrayal in the comfort of her dolls house, to the sister making wind-up toys from the dead birds she finds on her doorstep, this debut collection ventures into the surreal and delivers a sense of unease that leaves us questioning why we gather the things we do…”

Sarah Schofield’s stories have been widely published, including in the Best British Short Stories 2020 (Salt) and The New Abject: Tales Of Modern Unease, part of Comma’s Modern Horror series. One of her short stories was shortlisted for The Bridport Prize in 2020 and she has won the Orange New Voices Prize, Writer’s Inc and The Calderdale Fiction Prize. She has also been shortlisted for the Guardian Travel Writing Competition. Naomi Booth, author of Exit Management, says: “Sarah Schofield is a writer with tremendous rage and inventiveness, who takes the short story to new places.”

Sarah’s stories have also appeared in Comma Press anthologies Lemistry, Bio-Punk, Thought X, Beta Life, Spindles and Conradology as well as The New Abject, along with Wall: Nine Stories from Edge Hill Writers (EHUP), Spilling Ink Flash Fiction Anthology, Back and Beyond Arts Publication, Litfest’s The Language of Footprints, Synaesthesia Magazine, Lakeview International Journal, Woman’s Weekly and others.

In December, Sarah is back in Manchester following her recent Blackwell’s appearance, reading alongside the likes of Writing The Uncanny editor Richard V Hirst, Andrew Michael Hurley, Nicholas Royle and Melissa Wan at an event called Ghosts At The Talleyrand.