Join members of the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies for the first of our Spring/Summer Contemporary Reading Groups for 2025. This is the first of a series of 4 reading groups (this year there are two in person and two online). These free sessions, which we run in the summer months, give us a chance to explore the prominent role of the Gothic in modern and contemporary culture. Come along for a relaxed conversation among enthusiasts and avid readers.

This reading group takes place online on Teams. The Teams link will be emailed to you two days before the reading group, and on the morning of the event.

FORMAT
The session will be led by one of our postgraduate Gothic researchers Quen Took and Becky Alaise. There is no need to prepare questions or reviews. Please just turn up on the day ready to chat about the book.

AUDIENCE
This reading group is free and open to everyone, but please note that regular attendees tend to be postgraduate researchers and members of staff. For this reason, the group might not suit total beginners.

For more information on the Contemporary Gothic Reading Group and other events organised by the Gothic Centre, please visit our website: https://manchestergothic.mmu.ac.uk/

or join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1589997731237020

If you’d like to join us for our next in-person Reading Group on 4 June, which includes a special Q and A with local author Susan Barker, it is being held at John Rylands Library on Deansgate during the Festival of Libraries. To register, click here.

About The Hollow Places

Award-winning author Ursula Vernon, writing as T. Kingfisher, presents a terrifying tale of hidden worlds and monstrous creations

Recently divorced and staring down the barrel of moving back in with her parents, Carrot really needs a break. And a place to live. So when her Uncle Earl, owner of the eclectic Wonder Museum, asks her to stay with him in exchange for cataloguing the exhibits, of course she says yes.

The Wonder Museum is packed with taxidermy, shrunken heads, and an assortment of Mystery Junk. For Carrot, it’s not creepy at all: she grew up with it. What is creepy is the hole that’s been knocked in one of the museum walls, and the corridor behind it. There’s just no space for a corridor in the museum s thin walls or the concrete bunker at the end of it, or the strange islands beyond the bunker s doors, or the whispering, unseen things lurking in the willow trees.

Carrot has stumbled into a strange and horrifying world, and They are watching her. Strewn among the islands are the remains of Their meals and Their experiments. And even if she manages to make it back home again, she can’t stop calling Them after her.

This text has echoes of Algernon Blackwood’s classic tale of supernatural horror, ‘The Willows’ (1907) – you may wish to give this a read for comparison, if you’ve not come across it before. Available for free online here.