Jenn Ashworth – författare

'Forget The Salt Path - this writer's introspective journey provides genuine food for thought... Chastened but buoyant, she's stimulating to be with, her book the best kind of walking companion' Guardian'Touching, thoughtful and frank - Jenn Ashworth is a wonderful writer'David Nicholls, author of You Are Here'I've long loved Ashworth's uncanny fiction, and this memoir is filled with her characteristic understanding of the connections between the physical world and our interior lives. Wonderful for taking on a walk yourself.'Financial Times'Like going on a long walk with an old friend: I loved it' Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-TimeBurnt out and longing for an escape, Jenn Ashworth emerged from lockdown with a compulsive need to walk - and to walk away. Armed with little more than the knowledge imparted by a two-day orienteering course and a set of maps, she embarked on the most epic of English walks: Wainwright's Coast to Coast.Guided not just by Wainwright's writing but also by daily letters from her friend Clive - facing an epic journey of his own - Jenn's pilgrimage soon becomes more than just walking: a chance to reconnect and excavate, to re-engage with the act of caring for others and for oneself.But the walk's tricky terrain is not the only thing standing in Jenn's way. As days go by, her balance begins to fail her and the act of putting one foot in front the other becomes a new exercise in caution. When a vicious heatwave forces her to pause her expedition and gives her an opportunity to investigate the new limitations of her body, Jenn is confronted with a life-altering diagnosis - and a new path of self-discovery.'With honesty, humour and determination, Ashworth's journey takes the reader from coast to coast in search of freedom'Jessica Andrews, author of Milk Teeth'Stunning - and stunningly intelligent . . . I was very moved and with her every step of the way'Julie Myerson, author of Nonfiction'Full of intelligence and wisdom, searing self-awareness and humour... Jenn Ashworth is an incredibly talented writer'Lily Dunn, author of Sins of My Father'Beautifully realised and powerful'Catherine Taylor, author of The Stirrings

'Touching, thoughtful and frank - Jenn is a wonderful writer' David Nicholls'The best kind of walking companion' Guardian 'Wonderful for taking on a walk yourself' Financial Times'Exceptionally good company. I loved it' Mark HaddonBurnt-out and in need of retreat, Jenn Ashworth emerged from lockdown with a compulsive need to walk - and to walk away. Armed with little more than the knowledge imparted by a two-day orienteering course and a set of maps, she embarked on the most epic of English walks: Wainwright's Coast to Coast.Guided not just by Wainwright's writing but also by daily letters from her friend Clive - facing an epic journey of his own - Jenn's pilgrimage soon became more than just walking: a chance to reconnect and excavate, to reflect and meditate, to re-engage with the act of caring for others and for one self.Arresting in its unbridled honesty, The Parallel Path is a moving journey through the ever-changing scenery of the North - and the internal landscape of a life in turmoil.

It's Friday in the Leeke household, but this is no ordinary Friday and the Leekes are a little unusual: they are Lancastrian Mormons, and this evening their son Gary will return from 2 years as a missionary in Salt Lake City.His mother is planning a celebratory dinner - with difficulty, since she's virtually housebound with an undiagnosed, embarrassing condition. What she doesn't realise is that the rest of the family - her meek husband, disturbed oldest son, and teenage daughter - have other plans for the evening, each involving drastic and irrevocable action.As the narrative baton passes from one Leeke to the next, disaster inexorably looms. Except that nothing goes according to plan, and the outcome is as unexpected as it is shocking. Giving a fascinating insight into the Mormon way of life, this blackly funny tale of innocence betrayed shows the havoc religion can wreak.

I'm sitting on my couch, watching the local news. There's Chloe's parents, the mayor, the hangers on, all grouped round the pond for the ceremony. It's ten years since Chloe and Carl drowned, and they've finally chosen a memorial - a stupid summerhouse. The mayor has a spade decked out in pink and white ribbon, and he's started to dig.You can tell from their faces that something has gone wrong. But I'm the one who knows straightaway that the mayor has found a body. And I know who it is.This is the tale of three fourteen-year-old girls and a volatile combination of lies, jealousy and perversion that ends in tragedy. Except the tragedy is even darker and more tangled than their tight-knit community has been persuaded to believe.Blackly funny and with a surreal edge to its portrait of a northern English town, Jenn Ashworth's gripping novel captures the intensity of girls' friendships and the dangers they face in a predatory adult world they think they can handle. And it shows just how far that world is willing to let sentiment get in the way of the truth.

Annie is obese, lonely and hopeful. Armed with self-help books, her cat and a collection of cow-shaped milk jugs, she moves into her new home and sets about getting to know the neighbours, especially the man next door. She ignores her neighbour's inconvenient girlfriend, but it's not quite as easy for Annie to dismiss her own past. As Annie's murky history of violence, secrets and sexual mishaps catches up with her, she cannot see that she has done anything wrong. She's just doing what any good neighbour would do, after all...

'Dark, compelling, beautifully written'Andrew Michael HurleyIn this eerie, atmospheric and mysterious tale, a woman returns to the house in Morecambe Bay where she grew up in the 1960s to find it falling apart, undermined by the roots of two huge sycamores. She is unaware that she has awoken the spirits of her parents, Jack and Nettie Clifford, who watch anxiously as their daughter Annette is overwhelmed by the state of the house and realise too late how far they neglected her as a child. As their memories come alive, the story unfolds of a crucial summer when Annette was 8 and Nettie became too ill to run their boarding house. The lodgers have to go - all except the newly arrived butcher's apprentice, because he seems to have miraculous healing powers and is Jack and Nettie's last, desperate hope. But is he who he says he is? Why do those he lays his hands on feel an erotic charge? And why does he despise his own gift? As everything comes to a head, so too does Annette's story in the present. But this time, someone is looking out for her and comes to her rescue. Finally, the spirits of her parents can let go.

A present contains a monstrous secret.An uninvited guest haunts a Christmas party.A shadow slips across the floor by firelight.A festive entertainment ends in darkness and screams.Who knows what haunts the night at the dark point of the year? This collection of seasonal chillers looks beneath Christmas cheer to a world of ghosts and horrors, mixing terrifying modern fiction with classic stories by masters of the macabre. From Neil Gaiman and M. R. James to Muriel Spark and E. Nesbit, there are stories here to make the hardiest soul quail - so find a comfy chair, lock the door, ignore the cold breath on your neck and get ready to welcome in the real spirits of Christmas.

Original tales by remarkable writersHometown Tales is a series of books pairing exciting new voices with some of the most talented and important writers at work today. Some of the tales are fiction and some are narrative non-fiction - they are all powerful, fascinating and moving, and aim to celebrate regional diversity and explore the meaning of home. In these pages on Lancashire, you'll find two unique tales. 'After the Funeral, the Crawl' is an arresting portrait of a couple forced to confront a dark secret over the course of a pub crawl one night in Preston, by award-winning novelist Jenn Ashworth. 'JUDAS!' is a vivid, coming-of-age story that traces the political and cultural history of Manchester, from its industrial past to its eventual separation from the county, by Benjamin Webster.

A spine-tingling collection of spooky stories to curl up with on winter nights - perfect for fans of The Haunting Season, The Winter Spirits and M. R. James.This isle is full of noises...From the finfolk of the beaches of Orkney to the plague monsters of the Welsh mountains, and the giant slugs of the Derbyshire peaks to the Beast of Bodmin Moor, Britain is home to many strange creatures of folklore. Some are ancient, as enduring as the forests and mountains they inhabit. Others live among us, in our cities, creating new legends as they scuttle through the shadows. And none of them are to be trusted.In this deliciously chilling collection, award-winning and bestselling authors bring you tales inspired by the monsters that share our land. The perfect read for anyone who's ever spotted something slimy and unexplained in their peripheral vision, or seen eyes reflecting back in the forest where no eyes should be.INCLUDES NEW AND ORIGINAL STORIES FROM:Janice HallettAbir MukherjeeRosie AndrewsStuart TurtonDan JonesJenn AshworthSunyi DeanJane JohnsonRebecca Netley

SHORTLISTED FOR THE PORTICO PRIZE 2022 'Unnerving, absorbing . . . Laurie is a miraculous creation . . . Piercingly human and darkly funny' Sunday TimesOne ordinary morning, Laurie's husband disappears, leaving behind his phone and wallet. For weeks she tells no one, carrying on her cleaning job at the university, visiting her tricky, dementia-suffering father and holing up in her high-rise flat with a bottle to hand. When she finally reports him as missing, the police are suspicious. What took her so long?Laurie can't fully explain her behaviour even to herself, or the strange presence she senses in the flat. Only when she looks back on the ensuing wreckage does she begin to understand, and see how she might repair the damage.

To write about the North West coast is to do battle with the tenacity of stereotype. It is to dodge well-worn evocations of depressed, down-at-heel seaside towns, gaudy sea-front arcades, Ferris wheels, roller coasters and caravan parks and of past-their-best Lakeland towns with stunning views and grim prospects. To write about these places is to somehow acknowledge a variety of well publicised truths about the social and economic struggles of neglected and disenfranchised populations and also to dig deeper - to find the views and perspectives that surprise and make strange. No collection, even one including writers as varied and accomplished at the ones you'll meet in this anthology, could claim to provide a complete, exhaustive account of a region which encompasses hundreds of miles of coastline with centuries of complex history, a myriad of urban and natural habitats, and the entire available spectrum of human experience. Under these grey skies and rain-spotted sands lurk teeming hidden myriad of secret wildlife. Yet the stories included in Seaside Special succeed in gifting us readers with `postcards from the edge.' These ten writers, some of them established and some being published here for the first time, answer the challenge to `surprise and make strange' in an array of startling, often discomforting and most of all vivid glimpses of some of the lives and landscapes contained in this stretch of coast.

A genre-bending meditation on sickness, spirituality, creativity, and the redemptive powers of writing.Notes Made While Falling is both a genre-bending memoir and a cultural study of traumatized and sickened selves in fiction and film. It offers a fresh, visceral, and idiosyncratic perspective on creativity, spirituality, illness, and the limits of fiction itself. At its heart is a story of a disastrously traumatic childbirth, its long aftermath, and the out-of-time roots of both trauma and creativity in an extraordinary childhood. Moving from fairgrounds to Agatha Christie, from literary festivals to neuroscience and the Bible, from Chernobyl to King Lear, Ashworth takes us on a fantastic journey through familiar landscapes transformed through unexpected encounters and comic combinations. The everyday provides the ground for the macabre and the absurd, as the narration twists and stretches time. Hovering on the edge of madness, writing, it seems, might keep us sane—or might just allow us to keep on living. In Notes Made While Falling, Ashworth calls for a redefinition of the creative work of thinking, writing, teaching, and being, and she underlines the necessity of a fearlessly compassionate and empathic attention to vulnerability and fragility.