FOLK (2025)
FOLK (2025)
Velocity Press, UK / worldwide
A story of friendship, fidelity and finding your path
Available now via Velocity Press︎︎︎
Folk was always more than a youth group for Mark: it’s where he belongs, and where the friendships that have made him were forged. Straight talking Anna; beautiful, brilliant Zee; and Seb, who’s in a real band.
But when Gerry, the group’s self-proclaimed ‘thorn in the side of the establishment’ leader tasks him to take a new member under his wing, Mark’s world goes into a spin. Who is this ‘Jason’ guy with his tracksuits, beats and chemical drugs? And why is everyone so in awe of him? Jason just isn’t ‘Folk’. Then a wild camping trip brings Jason’s ‘fresh start’ to an abrupt end – and with it the collapse of Folk. Yet moving on turns out to be complicated.
Set against a backdrop of DIY sound systems and tectonic shifts in society, FOLK is a bittersweet 1990s coming-of-age tale of friendship, fidelity and finding your own path.
But when Gerry, the group’s self-proclaimed ‘thorn in the side of the establishment’ leader tasks him to take a new member under his wing, Mark’s world goes into a spin. Who is this ‘Jason’ guy with his tracksuits, beats and chemical drugs? And why is everyone so in awe of him? Jason just isn’t ‘Folk’. Then a wild camping trip brings Jason’s ‘fresh start’ to an abrupt end – and with it the collapse of Folk. Yet moving on turns out to be complicated.
Set against a backdrop of DIY sound systems and tectonic shifts in society, FOLK is a bittersweet 1990s coming-of-age tale of friendship, fidelity and finding your own path.
Praise for FOLK
An earlier draft of FOLK was longlisted for the 2023 McKitterick Prize, awarded annually by the British Society of Authors for a first novel by an author aged 40 or over.
Ravers, circa 1994
Photo: ©2025 Sweeneypix
︎An unofficial playlist inspired by scenes from the book