Adam Farrer

Published quarterly from the University of East Anglia, Hinterland brings you the best new creative nonfiction. Issue 11 is a Place Writing special in collaboration with the Centre for Place Writing, Manchester Metropolitan University.

Witty, tender and daring essays from the British David Sedaris 'A lovely writer: supple, stylish and almost effortlessly witty.' Daily Mail 'Made me laugh out loud and then properly cry.’ Jennie Godfrey When it comes to the challenge of being a man, Adam Farrer always seems to find a way to fall short… Broken Biscuits vividly recounts Adam’s struggles to live up to masculine expectations, real or imagined. From the calamity of his first serious relationship to an obsession with Prince that sees everyone questioning his sexuality, and from the repercussions of his adult circumcision to his doubts about his ability to survive the apocalypse, this candid and personal collection of essays is astonishingly far-reaching and riotously funny. Holding up a mirror to Adam’s own body image, his relationship with his family, his sense of self-worth and the mortifying experience of arriving at a teenage party wearing strawberry-patterned short shorts, this book is about growing up and trying to define yourself as a man but somehow always missing the mark.

WINNER OF THE 2021 NORTHBOUND BOOK AWARD 'Adam Farrer is a bold new voice in nonfiction writing. His keen observations are as gentle as they are wry, as attentive to the bleak truths of loss and deprivation as they are to the eccentric humour of humans being entirely themselves ... Witty, charming, moving and real.' Jenn Ashworth Before Adam Farrer’s family relocated to Withernsea in 1992, he’d never heard of the Holderness coast. The move represented one thing to Adam: a chance to leave the insecurities of early adolescence behind. And he could do that anywhere. What he didn’t know was how much he’d grow to love the quirks and people of this faded Yorkshire resort, in spite of its dilapidated attractions and retreating clifftops. While Adam documents the minutiae of small-town life, he lays bare experiences that are universal. His insights on family, friendship, male mental health and suicide are revealed in stories of reinvention, rapacious seagulls, interdimensional werewolves, burlesque dancing pensioners, and his compulsion towards the sea. Cold Fish Soup is an affectionate look at a place and its inhabitants, and the ways in which they can shape and influence someone, especially of an impressionable age. Adam’s account explores what it means to love and be shaped by a place that is under threat, and the hope – and hilarity – that can be found in community.