FOLK (2025)
FOLK (2025)
Youth, beats and abandonment in 90s Britain
For Mark, Folk was always more than a youth club. It was home. A space to grow up, mess up, and stand by his tribe. Then the mysterious ‘Jason’ turns up and Mark’s world goes into freefall. A summer of heartbreak and hedonism culminates in a wild camping trip, where it’s not just ideals that get abandoned.
In the aftermath emerges an unflinching portrait of teenhood, masculinity and memory as underground culture collided with establishment control, and a generation fought to define itself.
Coming at a time when youth clubs continue to close and our societies are more polarised than ever, FOLK is historical fiction that speaks to today's anxieties around identity and what it means to belong.
Longlisted for the McKitterick Prize.
Upcoming events
Thursday 6th November 2025
Ebert & Weber, Berlin
Past events
Sound Metaphors, Berlin
Thurs 18 Sept 2025
Reading extracts, playing records, and chatting with Paul Hanford at Sound Metaphors, one of Berlin’s best loved record shops.
Farsight Gallery, London
Saturday 6 Sept 2025
London launch in Soho, with Emma Warren, author of Up The Youth Club (Faber) and photographer Yushy (Velocity Press) as part of the exhibition Section 63: Underground & Unmasted - Documenting Underground London Raves
“Evocative, funny and bittersweet…a rave folk tale brimming with Shane Meadows levels of small-town Englishness. Full of dodgy situations, crumbling ideals, first love and finding magic in the mundane, all set to the rising pulse of free rave culture drawing ever closer.”
– Paul Hanford, author of Coming To Berlin (Velocity Press)
"Persuasive and powerful... offering new insights into the freedoms offered by illegal raves and radical youth clubs, told through the lens of an overthinking teenage boy and his friends."
– Emma Warren, author of Up The Youth Club (Faber)
"A timeless portrait of the bittersweet growing pains of youth. I absolutely loved it."
– Justin Robertson, author of The Trial of Jonah (Velocity Press)
