The New Abject – online book launch with Altrincham Word Fest

Following a successful first-ever foray into the world of online festival festivities earlier in October, Altrincham Word Fest has a last hurrah to present the first in two events to launch Comma Press’s new horror anthology The New Abject (read about the second one, on 4 November, here).

Altrincham Word Fest welcomes Lara Williams and Sarah Schofield, two of the contributors to The New Abject to celebrate the launch of their book with live readings and chat around the spooky subject.

Comma’s award-winning anthology The New Uncanny commissioned fiction writers to create stories updating our understanding of Freud’s ‘unheimlich’ – The New Abject has now invited leading authors to produce stories of modern unease that respond to that other psychoanalytic theory of horror, dreamt up by philosopher Julia Kristeva, professor emeritus at the University of Paris. Says the blurb: “Something has fallen away. We have lost something of ourselves, our history, what we once were. That something, if we are to face it, look it squarely in the eyes, terrifies us, makes us wretched. This is the horror of the abject.”

For this event, we head – virtually, of course – to Altrincham (read our brand-new guide to the town here), from where the third Altrincham Word Fest welcomes Lara Williams and Sarah Schofield, two of the contributors to The New Abject to celebrate the launch of their book with live readings and chat around the spooky subject.

Lara Williams is the author of the short story collection Treats, which was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, the Edinburgh First Book Award and the Saboteur Awards. Her debut novel Supper Club has been translated into five languages, won the Guardian Not The Booker Prize and was listed as a Book of the Year 2019 by TIME, Vogue and elsewhere. She lives in Manchester and is a contributor to publications including Guardian, Independent, Times Literary Supplement, Vice and Dazed. Her second novel is chalked out to come out in Spring 2020 with publishers Hamish Hamilton.

Sarah Schofield’s stories have been published in the anthologies Lemistry, Bio-Punk, Thought X, Beta Life, Spindles and Conradology (all with Comma Press), Wall: Nine Stories from Edge Hill Writers (EHUP), Best of British Short Stories 2020 (Salt), 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. She has been shortlisted for a number of prizes. Sarah is an Associate Tutor of Creative Writing at Edge Hill University and runs writing courses and workshops. Her debut short story collection is out in 2021.