With the short story enjoying another resurgence, two of today’s most exciting British-Jewish writers join us to discuss their extraordinary first fiction collections. Having written non-fiction for the TLS and the White Review and contributed a story to the Queer Life, Queer Love anthology, Parallel Hells is the deliciously strange debut from Leon Craig. Among its 13 stories, drawing on folklore in refreshingly innovative ways, we meet a golem whose powers far exceed its creator’s expectations, a bitter Oxford historian and an ancient being who feasts on the shame of contemporary Londoners. Adam Ferner’s non-fiction books include Think Differently: Philosophy for Modern Life and How to Disagree; now writing as A.M. Moskovitz he uses the horror short story form to critique the excesses and absurdities of philosophy and academia in Notes From the Crawl Room. A chance to hear from two rising literary stars.

Leon Craig is a writer from North London. She studied English at UCL, Medieval Literature at Oxford and Creative Writing at Birkbeck. Her writing has been published by the White Review, the TLS, Another Gaze and the London Magazine, among others. Leon is a member of the LGBTQ+ Writing Collective the Future is Back.

Adam Ferner (writing as A M Moskowitz) is a freelance writer and child support worker living in London. He completed his PhD in analytic metaphysics before going on to author and co-author several non-fiction books including Think Differently (2016), How to Disagree (with Darren Chetty, 2018), and The Philosophers’ Library (with Chris Meyns, 2021). Notes from the Crawl Room (2021) is his first collection of short stories. His current research is focussed on childcare ethics and psychoanalysis. For more information, visit his website here.

Sam Jordison is co-director of the award winning independent publisher Galley Beggar Press. He is also a journalist, critic and the co-host of the Across The Pond podcast about books and authors.