Stories to live and die for: prize-winning contemporary fiction

Fiction enables us to consider some challenging, vital and creative issues and moments in life, and to imagine how things could be otherwise. We will be reading and discussing prize-winning contemporary fiction including Eimear McBride's challenging A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing (2013), which explores the life of a young Irish girl. We will also look at Ali Smith's inspirational How to Be Both (2014), a book concerned with art and parallel lives, both 'compassionate' and 'playful'.