Lisa Blower

Lisa Blower is an award-winning writer, creative writing tutor and academic hailed by Kit De Waal as the 'natural heir to Arnold Bennett'. She is a champion of working-class literature and regional voices, often paying homage to The Potteries where she grew up. She's the author of 2 novels, Sitting Ducks (Fair Acre Press, 2016) - shortlisted for The Rubery Award, the Arnold Bennett Prize and The Guardian's Not the Booker - and Pondweed (Myriad Editions, 2020). Her debut collection of short stories It's Gone Dark over Bill's Mother's (Myriad Editions, 2019) won the Arnold Bennett Prize and was longlisted for The Edge Hill Prize, and features the prize-winning ‘Broken Crockery’ (The Guardian’s National Short Story competition, 2009), ‘Barmouth’ (shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award, 2013), ‘The Land of Make Believe’ (Highly Commended, The Bridport Prize, 2015), and ‘Abdul’ (longlisted The Sunday Times Short Story Award, 2018). Her work has appeared on BBC Radio 4, in the New Welsh Review, The Simple Things, Comma press, Oh Magazine, The Big Issue amongst others, and she was a contributor to the anthologies Common People (Unbound, 2019) and Spake (Nine Arches Press, 2019) which celebrate the regional voice and being working-class. She was a columnist for The New Issue and regularly tutors for Arvon and Literature Wales. She is a trustee for Writing West Midlands and recipient of DYCP funding for a collection of personal essays entitled Class Half Full. Lisa is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Keele University where she continues to champion regional voices and working-class fictions.

www.lisablower.co.uk / @lisablowerwrite