Saturday 24 March
A young writer to watch - Ross Raisin

Meet one of the most exciting young novelists of today. Keighley-born Raisin's debut novel God's Own Country was published in 2008. It was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and won a Betty Trask Award. Yorkshire dialect features heavily in it.
The novel focuses on Sam Marsdyke, a psychotic teenager living in a harsh rural environment, and follows his journey from isolated oddity to
outright insanity.

Thomas Meaney in The Washington Post compared the novel favourably to Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, and said that it 'more convincingly registers the internal logic of unredeemable delinquency'. Writing in The Guardian Justine Jordan described the novel as 'an absorbing read', which marked Raisin out as 'a young writer to watch'. In April 2009 the book won Raisin the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award.

The main character in Waterline, Raisin‟s second novel, recently serialised on Radio 4, is Mick, a cab driver from Glasgow who becomes a drifter, ending up on the street. Anthony Cummins wrote in The Observer: 'Authentically Weegie patter is the tool by which Raisin makes us share Mick's view of the world. Like Sam, Mick embodies a community in the process of being gutted by asset-strippers in thrall to gentrification.'

3pm New Headingley Club, St Michael’s Road
£6

http://www.foyles.co.uk/ross-raisin
http://theomnivore.co.uk/Book/7323-God_s_Own_Country/default.aspx
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jul/17/waterline-by-ross-raisin-review