Caleb Azumah Nelson - Small Worlds

This event will be held at Kitchen Garden Cafe on York Road, please enter via Fletcher's Bar on York Road.

We are absolutely delighted to announce that we have Caleb Azumah Nelson joining us here at Kitchen Garden Cafe. Caleb will be talking about his book 'Small Worlds'.

Caleb will be in conversation with Anna Metcalfe.

Caleb and Anna will be in conversation for around an hour. There will then be a book signing afterwards.

Caleb Azumah Nelson is a 29-year-old British-Ghanaian writer and photographer living in South East London. His first novel, OPEN WATER, won the Costa First Novel Award and Debut of the Year at the British Book Awards, and was a no.1 Times bestseller. It also won the Bad Form Book of the Year Award, a Betty Trask Award and a Somerset Maugham Award, and was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, Waterstones Book of the Year, and longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and the Desmond Elliott Prize. He was selected as a National Book Foundation '5 under 35' honoree by Brit Bennett. His second novel, SMALL WORLDS, was published in hardback in May 2023, and will be released in paperback in April 2024. Caleb Azumah Nelson has been announced as the winner of the world's largest and most prestigious literary prize for young writers – the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize, for his novel Small Worlds.

Small Worlds:

The one thing that can solve Stephen's problems is dancing. Dancing at Church, with his parents and brother, the shimmer of Black hands raised in praise; he might have lost his faith, but he does believe in rhythm. Dancing with his friends, somewhere in a basement with the drums about to drop, while the DJ spins garage cuts. Dancing with his band, making music which speaks not just to the hardships of their lives, but the joys too. Dancing with his best friend Adeline, two-stepping around the living room, crooning and grooving, so close their heads might touch. Dancing alone, at home, to his father's records, uncovering parts of a man he has never truly known.
Stephen has only ever known himself in song. 

But what becomes of him when the music fades? When his father begins to speak of shame and sacrifice, when his home is no longer his own? How will he find space for himself: a place where he can feel beautiful, a place he might feel free?

Set over the course of three summers in Stephen's life, from London to Ghana and back again, SMALL WORLDS is an exhilarating and expansive novel about the worlds we build for ourselves, the worlds we live, dance and love within.

Anna Metcalfe is a short story writer and novelist. In 2023, she was listed as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. She teaches Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham. Her debut novel Chrysalis was published in May 2023

As always, we look forward to seeing you. 

Catherine & Claire