New Writing North

Ten years ago, the late Gordon Burn took the events of 2007 and during that year wrote and published Born Yesterday: The News as a Novel, an ambitious and experimental novel about the way news is made, and the way the media creates and manipulates the stories we see before us. In the spirit of this fine literary experiment with fact and fiction, we have commissioned four outstanding writers to produce a piece of work in response to the extraordinary unfolding news cycle of 2017. Alexei Sayle was the first MC of the Comedy Store and later the Comic Strip. After years of stand-up, television, sitcoms and films, he published his first highly acclaimed collection of short stories, Barcelona Plates, which was followed by two novels. The second volume of Alexei’s memoirs, Thatcher Stole My Trousers, is out now.