BLF: The Quiet Lives of Working-Class Men

Birmingham Literature Festival 2025
The Quiet Lives of Working- Class Men with Anthony Shapland and James McDermott

Anthony Shapland’s debut novel, A Room Above a Shop, is set in a small town in South Wales where there were very few opportunities for young men. It follows M and B as they form a connection and create a life together, in secret, in the room above the declining hardware shop M inherited. Set against the backdrop of Section 28 and the AIDS crisis, it is a beautiful story of love untold.

James McDermott lost his sixty-year-old father to COVID after three weeks in intensive care. His second collection, Father Myself, explores his complex grief following his father’s death after he refused the vaccine many times, and his relationship with his father as a queer teenager growing up in the North. These books bring to life the quiet relationships between men and how those relationships are shaped by queerness and its social contexts.

Chaired by Ceri Morgan

Running time approx. one hour