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Events

Tag: author event

Yorkshire crime fiction with AA Dhand & Russ Thomas

For fans of crime fiction, your chance to hear from acclaimed writers AA Dhand and Russ Thomas about their latest Yorkshire-set crime thrillers. 

In AA Dhand’s adrenaline-filled thriller, The Chemist, Bradford pharmacist and pillar of the community Idris Khan goes looking for his missing childhood sweetheart and finds himself in the middle of a turf war between two powerful Yorkshire drug cartels. Praise for AA Dhand: “Outstanding – relentless, multi-layered suspense and real human drama” Lee Child 

Sleeping Dogs by Russ Thomas is a Sheffield-set police procedural novel with shades of Line of Duty – a cold case investigation with an element of police corruption. Written with Russ’s trademark wry humour, it’s a whodunnit with a clever twist. Praise for Russ Thomas: “An intriguing start to a new series, introducing a pleasingly misanthropic new hero” Observer 

AA Dhand was raised in Bradford and spent his youth observing the city from behind the counter of a small convenience store. After qualifying as a pharmacist, he worked in London and travelled extensively before returning to Bradford to start his own business and begin writing. The history, diversity and darkness of the city have inspired his Harry Virdee novels and he has adapted the third book of these for a BBC crime drama series Virdee broadcast in February 2025.

 Russ Thomas was born in Essex, raised in Berkshire and now lives in Sheffield. After a few ‘proper’ jobs (among them: pot-washer, optician’s receptionist, supermarket warehouse operative, call-centre telephonist, and storage salesman), he discovered the joys of bookselling, where he could talk to people about books all day. His highly acclaimed debut novel and first in the DS Adam Tyler series, Firewatching (2020) was followed by Nighthawking in 2021. 

Access and Covid safety measures: if you have specific access needs or queries and/or prefer to be seated away from other audience members as a Covid safety measure, please contact our Admin at: [email protected] with your request.  

Supported by:

Creative Scene

Creative People & Places Arts Council funding

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Date: Thursday 15 May 

Time: 7pm-8pm 

Location: Cellar, Lawrence Batley Theatre, Queen Street, Huddersfield HD1 2SP 

Tickets: £9 (£7 conc), free for University of Huddersfield staff and students & essential carers 

Early Bird tickets have now ended

For further information on concession and essential carer tickets please visit our FAQ’s page.

Age guidance: 12+ (U16s should be accompanied by an adult) 

Access Guide: https://www.accessable.co.uk/huddersfield-literature-festival/access-guides/the-cellar

Book tickets

Please note: When purchasing tickets please download the Eventbrite ‘app’ or ‘create an Eventbrite account’. This will facilitate quicker access to your tickets.

Gripping Mysteries with Yvonne Battle-Felton & Lisa Rookes

If you’re a fan of gripping mysteries with bold characters and unexpected twists then you’ll love this event! Yvonne Battle-Felton and Lisa Rookes chat about their compelling new novels, both set in small communities where dark secrets are revealed with dramatic consequences. 

Yvonne Battle-Felton’s latest novel welcomes you to Curdle Creek, an all-Black town in rural America governed by a tradition of ominous rituals and a strict policy of one in, one out. When Osira is forced into the great unknown, she comes face-to-face with those she believed were lost – and the sinister reality of her birthplace unravels around her

In Lisa Rooke’s The Village, it’s no surprise when popular Joni Blackwood is crowned Gallows Queen on All Gallows’ Eve, but the following morning she is missing. When human remains are found in the church graveyard, everyone is quick to make assumptions. But this is only the start of dark truths in the village coming to light. 

Yvonne Battle-Felton is an author, academic, host, creative producer and writer. Remembered (Dialogue Books/Blackstone Publishing) was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction (2019) and shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize (2020). Yvonne has nonfiction children’s titles in Penguin Random House’s Ladybird series. Curdle Creek (Henry Holt/Dialogue Books) was published in October 2024. Yvonne is the Academic Director of Creative Writing at Cambridge University Institute of Continuing Education and a Senior Commissioning Editor at John Murray. 

Lisa Rookes is an award-winning journalist and lecturer. Her debut novel The Village will be followed by The Empty Cradle in August 2025. She spent the start of her career as a crime reporter and news editor before moving to national newspapers and women’s magazines. She is currently head of the undergraduate Journalism programme at the University of Sheffield and has won further multiple awards for her teaching. She lives in Holmfirth with her two sons, an arthritic Labrador and a disabled pug. 

Access and Covid safety measures: if you have specific access needs or queries and/or prefer to be seated away from other audience members as a Covid safety measure, please contact our Admin at: [email protected] with your request.  

Date: Saturday 10 May 

Time: 3pm-4pm 

Location: Cellar, Lawrence Batley Theatre, Queen Street, Huddersfield HD1 2SP 

Tickets: £7 (£5 conc), free for University of Huddersfield staff and students & essential carers 

Early Bird tickets have now ended

For further information on concession and essential carer tickets please visit our FAQ’s page.

Age guidance: 12+ (U16s should be accompanied by an adult) 

Access Guide: https://www.accessable.co.uk/huddersfield-literature-festival/access-guides/the-cellar 

Book tickets

Please note: When purchasing tickets please download the Eventbrite ‘app’ or ‘create an Eventbrite account’. This will facilitate quicker access to your tickets.

An Afternoon with Rachel Joyce

The award-winning and multi-million-copy bestselling author of novels such as The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and Perfect chats about her latest novel: The Homemade God. 

A brother and three sisters gather at the family’s lakeside house in Italy. Their father, a famous artist, has recently remarried a much younger woman and decamped there to finish his masterpiece. Now he is dead and there is no sign of a painting. A beautifully observed novel about fame, the fragility and enduring quality of art, sibling relationships and rivalry, and how we learn to emerge from the history of our family to become who we are. 

Rachel Joyce is the author of the Sunday Times and international bestsellers The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Perfect, The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North, The Music Shop, Miss Benson’s Beetle, and short story collection A Snow Garden & Other Stories. Her books have been translated into 37 languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide.  

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. The critically acclaimed film of the novel, for which Rachel also wrote the screenplay, was released in 2023. Miss Benson’s Beetle won the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize in 2021. Rachel was awarded the Specsavers National Book Awards New Writer of the Year in December 2012 and was shortlisted for the UK Author of the Year in 2014. In 2024 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Kingston University. Rachel has written over 20 original afternoon plays and adaptations of the classics for BBC Radio 4, including major adaptations of all of the Brontë novels. 

Early bird tickets £8 (£5 conc) available to 22 April. 

Access and Covid safety measures: if you have specific access needs or queries and/or prefer to be seated away from other audience members as a Covid safety measure, please contact our Admin at: [email protected] with your request. 

Date: Sunday 18 May 

Time: 3pm-4pm 

Location: The Civic Holmfirth, Huddersfield Road, Holmfirth HD9 3AS 

Tickets: £10 (£8 conc), free for University of Huddersfield staff and students & essential carers 

Early Bird tickets are now ended

For further information on concession and essential carer tickets please visit our FAQ’s page.

Age guidance: 12+ (U16s should be accompanied by an adult) 

Access Guide: https://www.accessable.co.uk/huddersfield-literature-festival/access-guides/the-civic-holmfirth

Book tickets

Please note: When purchasing tickets please download the Eventbrite ‘app’ or ‘create an Eventbrite account’. This will facilitate quicker access to your tickets.