Jenn Ashworth, Chris Killen and Richard Milward @ Litfest October 23, 2009

Chris Killen

The Bookseller and style bibles Vice and Dazed and Confused have hailed 27 year old Chris Killen as a leading new talent for 2009.

"As fresh and honest a take on twenty-first century relationships as you are likely to find. I was knocked out by the cold, translucent beauty of Killen's prose." Matt Haigh

Chris Killen's first novel, The Bird Room, is a love story with a twist. When a boy named Will meets Alice, he can’t believe his luck. She’s smart, sexy and in love with him. She brings meaning to his urban existence and his McJob. But soon devotion leads Will to something darker.

"The Bird Room is a novel so fresh it practically pings with energy… fizzes with deadpan wit and cutting one-liners. … The Bird Room, a novel of misguided youth, is an exciting debut from a novelist already beginning to display maturity beyond his years.’ The Independent

Jenn Ashworth

““…who wouldn’t kill for a comic gift like Jenn Ashworth’s?” The Guardian

“a hugely readable debut novel… about the inability to know others and ourselves” The Independent

“evokes a damaged mind with the empathy and confidence of Ruth Rendell” The Times

Jenn Ashworth is a Preston based novelist, blogger and short story writer. After studying creative writing at the University of Manchester, her first novel, A Kind of Intimacy was published by Arcadia in 2009. In 2008, she won the MLF Best Writing on a Blog Award. A Waterstones New Voices 2009 choice, until recently she was a librarian in a prison. Now, thanks to an Arts Council grant, she's a full-time writer and is currently working on her second novel, Cold Light.

Richard Milward

"Ten Storey Love Song brings the love story kicking and screaming up to date... rendered with that caustic wit and genuine warmth which typifies all that's best about northern England.’’ Irvine Welsh, The Guardian

Ten Storey Love Song follows the lives of the inhabitants of Peach House, a tower block in the heart of Middlesbrough. It charts Bobby the Artist’s rise to stardom and horrific drug psychosis, Johnnie’s attempts to stop thieving and start pleasing Ellen in bed and truck driver Alan Blunt.

"Look away if you're easily shocked, otherwise pre-order now.’" Lauren Laverne, Grazia

Another on the Waterstones New Voices 2009 list, Richard Milward is 24 - in 2007 Faber published his first novel, Apples. He was shortlisted for the 2007 South Bank Show Times Breakthrough Award and has just been given a grant by the UK Film Council to write the screenplay for Apples.

Official Website: http://www.litfest.org/Festival-and-Events/Jenn-Ashworth-Chris-Killen-and-Richard-Milward/33.html