Join award-winning poet and professor, Andrew McMillan, to celebrate the publication of his debut novel, Pity.

The town was once a hub of industry. A place where men toiled underground in darkness, picking and shovelling in the dust and the sleck. It was dangerous and back-breaking work but it meant something. Once, the town provided, it was important, it had purpose. But what is it now?

Set across three generations of a South Yorkshire mining family, Pity is a lament for a lost way of life as well as a celebration of resilience and the possibility for change. Andrew will be joined in conversation with a special guest to explore community, masculinity, and the question of who owns the narrative of a place, and what happens when a national narrative runs counter to local truth.

“Tender and true. It explores with brilliance and deep empathy how our lives – and our secrets – are always intertwined with those who went before us.” Douglas Stuart

"A deeply felt and rich enactment of love, loneliness and personal triumph that leaves an indelible mark on modern Queer life. With the poet's precision and capacious resistance to resolution, wherein doubt is transformed into force, McMillan's first foray into fiction is a magical one." Ocean Vuong