Lisa Blower

Lisa Blower is an award-winning writer 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 collection of short stories It’s Gone Dark over Bill’s Mother’s (Myriad Editions, 2019) won the Arnold Bennett Prize. She contributed to Common People (ed. Kit De Waal, Unbound, 2019), and was a columnist for The New Issue during 2020. She is Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader in Creative & Professional Writing at Wolverhampton University where she continues to champion regional voices.