Fiction enables us to consider some challenging, vital and creative issues and moments in life, and to imagine how things could be otherwise. We will be reading and discussing prize-winning contemporary fiction including Eimear McBride’s challenging A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing (2013), which explores the life of a young Irish girl. We will also look at Ali Smith’s inspirational How to Be Both(2014), a book concerned with art and parallel lives, both ‘compassionate’ and ‘playful’.