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Treats (Freight) is Lara Williams’ debut short story collection, exploring the tension between our real lives and the ones we perform on social media, where our narratives are often reduced to catchy phrases. Lara tells Ian why the short story form is the perfect vehicle to examine these tales and why she’s attracted to indulging in misery.

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Jennifer Reid celebrates Manchester’s industrial heritage by keeping alive Broadside Ballads, the ‘cheap bits of poetry on paper’ telling everyday stories of factory life. Many surviving Broadsides come without an identifiable tune, meaning Jennifer is free to make up the melody, just as she made up the term for herself, ‘The Broadside Balladress’

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The poet Jeffrey Wainwright examines the ballad tradition in poetry – what can Wordsworth’s writing about ordinary people tell us about distinctions between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture in art? Jeffrey’s latest collection of poetry, ‘The Reasoner’, is published by Carcanet.

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Andy Craven Griffiths is one of our 2015 ‘Verb New Voices’ – a scheme to develop new writing and performing talent from across the North of England (in conjunction with Arts Council England. New Writing North, Arvon Foundation, Freedom Studios and The Writing Squad). Andy has created ‘Here We Go’, a piece that blends his poetry with sound and drama.

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