Michael Stewart & Yvonne Battle-Felton

Blackwell’s Manchester, in partnership with the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University, welcomes authors Michael Stewart and Yvonne Battle-Felton for an evening of gothic fiction in conversation with Emma Liggins.

Michael Stewart’s Black Wood Women takes readers to Yorkshire in 1649, where Caragh, a young Irish woman fleeing religious persecution, stumbles upon a coven living beyond the strictures of men. In this haunting tale of survival and belonging, Stewart explores the dangers of intolerance and the darker threats that lie hidden within the forest.

Yvonne Battle-Felton’s Curdle Creek shifts the gothic lens to rural America, where Osira, a widow bound by the ominous rituals of her insular all-Black community, is forced into exile. What she discovers beyond the town’s borders unravels everything she thought she knew about inheritance, survival, and the sinister weight of tradition. Drawing on the unsettling atmospheres of Shirley Jackson and blending the literary with the surreal, Battle-Felton crafts a story that is both eerie and unforgettable.

Together, these two novels reveal the gothic as a space where histories of persecution, isolation, and haunting legacies take root. This event offers a rare chance to hear both authors in discussion about their inspirations, craft, and the enduring power of gothic storytelling.