Cold War Steve & Kit de Waal - Cold War Steve Annual 2024

We are delighted to announce that we have an event with Cold War Steve, aka Christopher Spencer, on Friday 15th December at 6:30pm. Chris will be talking about his brand new Cold War Steve Annual for 2024. One of the contributors to this brilliant book is the author, Kit de Waal, and Chris will be in conversation with Kit at the event. TWO Birmingham legends - what more could we ask to round up our events for 2023!?!

Cold War Steve:

Cold War Steve aka Christopher Spencer is an artist from Birmingham, England who started making surreal, satirical and hilarious photomontages on the bus in 2016. Multiple exhibitions, books, commissions for the National Galleries of Scotland, Whitworth in Manchester, Birmingham Museum and Gallery, giant billboard installations at Glastonbury Festival and a TIME magazine cover have all followed!

In 2020 his first jigsaw Hellscape was shortlisted for the Design Museum’s Design of the Year Award and his book A Prat’s Progress nominated for the The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize. Cold War Steve the same year shot a feature length documentary - Cold War Steve Meets The Outside World about his work, made with Bafta winning director Kieran Evans. The film was released in October 2020 on Sky Arts and the featured outdoor exhibition of the same name was nominated for a South Bank Award in 2021.
coldwarsteve.com

Kit de Waal:
Kit de Waal, born to an Irish mother and Caribbean father, was brought up among the Irish community of Birmingham in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Her debut novel My Name Is Leon was an international bestseller, shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award for 2017. In 2022 it was adapted for television by the BBC.

Her second novel, The Trick to Time, was longlisted for the Women's Prize and her young adult novel Becoming Dinah was shortlisted for the Carnegie CLIP Award 2020.

A collection of short stories, Supporting Cast was published in 2020. An anthology of working-class memoir, Common People was crowdfunded and edited by Kit in 2019. Kit founded her own TV production company, Portopia Productions and the Big Book Weekend, a free digital literary festival in 2020 and was named the FutureBook Person of the Year 2019. She is a patron of Prisoners Abroad, ambassador of Well-being in the Arts and a trustee of The Reading Agency.

Kit is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Professor and Writer in Residence at Leicester University. Her memoir Without Warning and Only Sometimes was published in August 2022.

Cold War Steve Annual 2024:

Embark on an annual excursion of scandals, absurdities and farcical monstrosities with satirist and artist Cold War Steve.

Enclosed in this esteemed tome you will find a land of hereditary weirdos and despicable world leaders; contemptible party-hosting and disastrous decision-making; delicious downfalls and nonsensical uprisings. The only path to sanity is through the most scathing of cosmic cynicism and commentary; thankfully, this annual provides just that. Featuring a congress of coruscating collages, as well as contributions from the revered James O’Brien, John Sweeney, Stewart Lee, Sheena Patel, Jason Williamson, Kit de Waal, Neville Southall and Roy, this volume is a fitting antidote to the disgraces and travesties of the last year and beyond. 

We look forward to seeing you. 

Catherine & Claire