I’m Hannah Kate – I’m a writer, radio presenter and editor based in Crumpsall, Manchester. My work has appeared in local and national magazines, as well as in anthologies, and I am currently writer-in-residence at Clayton Hall, Manchester. My short fiction is off-beat and weird, and often inspired by the history and stories of Manchester and the north of England. I like to write about the unsettlingly mundane and creepily municipal side of life. My poetry is eclectic in content and tone, and usually inspired by whatever has got stuck in my mind at the time: owls, text messages, medieval poetry, werewolves…
I present Hannah’s Bookshelf, a weekly literature show on North Manchester FM. I also run Hic Dragones, a Crumpsall-based micro-press specializing in dark fiction and digital editions of penny dreadfuls.
In my other life, as Dr Hannah Priest, I am an academic researcher, lecturer and writer. You can find out more about my other life on my academic blog.
Praise for Hannah’s short fiction:
Hannah Kate puts a marvellous slant on the whole affair, mixing palpable venom with humour to produce something rather entertaining.
Starburst Magazine (on ‘Nimby’)
The way these really suburban issues suddenly gets eaten up by something much wilder and nastier is well played and the surprises continue all the way to the end.
Runalong the Shelves (on ‘Nimby’)
The quality of the prose and skill in the crafting kept me hanging on to the last paragraph.
Gingernuts of Horror (on ‘Planning Permission’)
It’s compelling reading. An incredibly original plot with an escalating sense of uneasiness, all making for a good solid chunk of suspense-filled mystery-horror.
DLS Reviews (on ‘Planning Permission’)
Praise for Variant Spelling, Hannah’s debut poetry collection:
Delicate and strong, Hannah’s words beautifully communicate the impossibilities of communication. She explores the subtexts of what we do with our language in ways that will resonate with anyone who finds their own feelings and intents too big for semi colons.
Dominic Berry, Poet
The poems in Variant Spelling evoke a North in revolt; a place of abandoned dyeworks, soot, winter, granite and grease. Through the ‘shifting vowels’ of the title poem they celebrate a world at odds with the imposed culture of the South. It is at its most rebellious in Praise God, where Hannah ‘praises the God of the North’, a place where the ‘air hangs with burning witches’.
Rosie Lugosi, Poet and Performer