In this touching article for the Huffington Post, Polari Prize-winning author Diriye Osman talks about his fear of reading his work live. He praises Word Factory, where I’m the Associate Director. Have you ever been? It’s a monthly short story salon in Waterstones Piccadilly. If you love short stories or just great writing you should come along. Over the last 3 years we’ve had AS Byatt, Hanif Kureishi, Michael Morporgo, Lionel Shriver… to name but a few. You can have a look at the upcoming salon’s here and there’s also a treasure trove of videos of past salons.

You can see Diriye read from his groundbreaking short stories at Word Factory this  month, Sept 19.

Oh, and Diriye also praised my debut novel The Good Son, calling it ‘a revelatory and stunning coming-of-age story set during the Troubles in Ireland’. Nice!

You can read the full article here.

He looks amazing!