A priest, a rabbi and an atheist walk into a bar and not one of them is in the mood for a joke.
They had decided ahead of time to stagger their arrivals and lie about where they were going.
A priest, a rabbi and an atheist walk into a bar and not one of them is in the mood for a joke.
They had decided ahead of time to stagger their arrivals and lie about where they were going.
Reshma Ruia is the author of two novels, Something Black in the Lentil Soup and Still Lives as well as a short story collection, Mrs Pinto Drives to Happiness. Her poetry collection, A Dinner Party in the Home Counties, was awarded the 2019 Word Masala Award.
Eleanor loved writing poetry as a child and now enjoys writing poems for others to enjoy. She is a doctor by day, working to help children with developmental difficulties. Eleanor has had poems published by The Dirigible Balloon and Tyger Tyger Magazine.
I need to piss but I can’t take the stairs by the microfiche room or else I’ll see Kinchin again. Oh, he’ll be there, skulking in the stairwell, waiting to follow me up two flights of stairs, down a drab corridor and into the bathroom.
Gayathiri is a Tamil poet and Sex Education facilitator. They are interested in how language shapes childhood and how we use it to queer the future. Gayathiri won the Faber & Andlyn Publisher’s Prize 2022, the Primadonna Fiction Prize 2021 and they were shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize 2022.
A feast of a breakfast lay before my eyes. Scrambled eggs; not too rubbery but not too wet, streaky bacon, pancakes covered in sticky maple syrup, warm croissants, cereal, fruit, yoghurt. You name it; it’s there.
Ghost hunt No: 22. Saturday 28th January
Written by Bob
Organisation: Saltings-on-Sea Ghostbusters
Sarah Wimbush’s first collection, Shelling Peas with My Grandmother in the Gorgiolands (Bloodaxe, 2022) is rooted in Yorkshire with tales of childhood, colliery villages and Gypsies and Travellers. She is the recipient of a Northern Writers’ Award and author of prize-winning pamphlets.
This week, Ralph Dartford is in conversation with the wonderful Amanda Huggins. Join them for a lively discussion on everything from the poems they love to what their Bruce Springsteen songs are! You can find […]
Welcome to a special episode of the Northern Gravy Podcast, where Nick the fiction editor shares a couple of highlights from the recent live event, Northern Gravy Live at Home. This episode features the incredible […]
For the second in our ‘Live at Home’ series we proudly present 2 of the finest and electric spoken word artists working in in the UK.
Welcome While New Years is just around the corner (as if the lurking spectre of All I Want For Christmas Is You wasn’t enough to contend with), for us here at NG, New Year is […]
Toria was born in Knottingley in 1982. Her first book, ‘The Universe and Me’ was published in 2018 by Wrecking Ball press, and her upcoming collection ‘Another Time in Space’ is due to be released in December 2022.
Here the juniper trees slope sideways from the strong sea air, reaching out toward the water. And at certain times in the summer, you can walk along the beach path to see hundreds of cocooned caterpillars, awaiting their turn as butterflies.
Carmina Masoliver is a poet from south London, and founder of She Grrrowls feminist arts nights. She has been sharing her poetry on both the page and the stage for over a decade.
It’s Samhain. An important time of celebrations for the village, marking the harvest’s end and arrival of darker months. The village buzzed with bonfire and feast preparations. Everyone was excited. Everyone except Gwenni.
People can be so unexpected. One minute they’re all over you asking questions. Then, puff, they’re gone and there’s no-one to listen to the trickle of words that you count as conversation.
Steve Denehan lives in Kildare, Ireland with his wife Eimear and daughter Robin. He is the author of two chapbooks and four poetry collections. Winner of the Anthony Cronin Poetry Award and twice winner of Irish Times’ New Irish Writing.
Catherine Olver is a writer and researcher with a PhD in children’s literature from the University of Cambridge. She has special interests in LGBTQ+ poetry and in how literature can help humans participate in their environments (whether urban or rural) with sensitivity and joy.
Woke abruptly to discover I’d been hauling a sledge alone across the Antarctic Plateau again. Cramp in my leg from sleeping too still, but my body’s fizzes like lemonade’s in my veins.
Ceinwen lives in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, and writes short stories and poetry. She has been widely published in web magazines and in print anthologies.
Jacqueline is a primary school teacher and an emerging writer from the Isle of Man. She has had poems published in The Caterpillar, Tyger Tyger and The Dirigible Balloon.
He came back at 3.15. An innocuous return, a knock at the door.
He stood with his head against the door frame, hair matted and skin grey as stone. His clothes were streaked with mud and soaked through. I pulled the door wider. He came in.
Victoria Firth is a writer, theatre maker and performer based in Yorkshire. Her work is concerned with embodiment and connection, exploring things lots of us feel but don’t really talk about.
Tom pulled out a screwdriver, weathered from a lifetime of use, and waved it in my face. With one foot on the dustbin and one flat against the wall he hauled himself onto the windowsill and slipped the screwdriver into a small notch in the frame.
Northern Gravy ‘Live at Home’ presents the freshest new writing from the comfort of your armchair, bedroom or kitchen table.
It’s Coming Home! Don’t worry, we haven’t taken leave of our senses and abandoned new writing in favour of turning Northern Gravy into a football periodical. But the title is very apt, because we are, […]
Northern Gravy Podcast 6 is now available! There’s no special guest for this one, what you get is half an hour of scintillating badinage between Jonny, Ralph, and Nick as they chat through some more […]
Welcome to a brand new episode! On this voyage, Ralph and Jonny are joined in conversation by the wonderful Lisette Auton, a disabled writer, activist, and creative practitioner (and also NG blogger!) Read more about […]
If three is the magic number, then what does that make six? Double magic? We’re sure there’s probably an idea in there for a novel involving a rogue mathematician learning magic, but that’s another story […]
It wasn’t fair, he hadn’t done anything! Joe stomped up the stairs to his bedroom. Sent to his room “without dinner or devices” as his mum had said. Which was a laugh as he didn’t have any ‘devices’ and a stale cheese barm barely counted as dinner.
Matt Nicholson is a poet and performer from East Yorkshire who lives within the cultural halo of the City of Hull.
‘Goodbye, mother. Don’t come out.’ My daughter pauses in the doorway, stooping down to press her powdered cheek against my cheek. Then she takes her own daughter’s hand, and walks off. Neither one of them looks back.
Kate Williams is a children’s poet, with numerous contributions to anthologies by UK publishers such as Macmillan, Oxford University Press, Bloomsbury and Hodder.
Jane Burn is an award-winning, working class, pansexual, autistic person, parent, poet, artist, and essayist.
Many years later, as he faced the wall of thorns, a young prince was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him aside and told him he was to be married.
JP Seabright (she/they) is a queer writer living in London. They have three pamphlets published: Fragments from Before the Fall: An Anthology of Post-Anthropocene Poetry; the erotic memoir NO HOLDS BARRED, and GenderFux, a collaborative poetry pamphlet.
It isn’t me, it’s you, he says, so I leave behind the love of my life at sixteen and travel to England to live with my uncle and his family. My drunk father gets easily coerced by his I-know-better brother to send me across the world.
I was struggling to think of some jokes for a particular scene in my latest book so I did what I usually do when I’m stuck. I asked twitter. The answers varied from “Lego tiger […]
The Northern Gravy Podcast returns with a conversation between our Poetry Editor and raconteur extraordinaire Ralph Dartford, and novelist Stephen May, who kindly provided an article which accompanied the fifth edition of Northern Gravy. Look […]
Livvy and Hugh travelled by ferry from Nice to Calvi and rented a tiny bergerie in the northern mountains of La Balagne. It was high season, and the woman in the tourist office told them they were lucky to find anywhere.
HLR (she/her) is a prize-winning poet, working-class writer, and professional editor from North London. She is a commended winner of The Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition 2021, and she also won The Desmond O’Grady International Poetry Competition 2021.
I discovered I could travel back in time at about the same time that I realised I was into girls. Finding myself back at the start of the gym class I’d just struggled through proved the former; my all-consuming crush on my best friend.
Lying. Weeping. Falling. Sinking. Drying. Crumpling. Desiccating. Settling. That’s how it happened, the slow slip from stoved-in head to clean white bones. And now, here I am. Waiting.
Elinor Clark hails from Leeds in the UK. Her work has recently appeared in journals including AMBIT, The Blue Nib, The London Magazine and Lighthouse Journal. She is co-editor of Briefly Zine.
Rhiannon Oliver is an actress and poet from Cardiff. As an actress, she has worked with companies such as BBC, Sky 1, The National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, National Theatre of Wales and Manchester Royal Exchange, as well as off Broadway and on UK and International tours.
We had two special weekends coming up. Weekend one was Blackpool. Six of us. The lads only. Weekend two was Stig coming out of prison. Weekend one was excitement. Weekend two was dread.
Amanda Huggins is the author of two novellas: Crossing the Lines and the 2021 Saboteur Award-winner, All Our Squandered Beauty, as well as four collections of short stories and poetry.