The workplace: time sheets and toil. We sell so much of our lives to these places, but the stories contained behind the work screens and machines are rarely captured in words. However, in Lauren Mooney’s debut novel Service – a time-slip, horror house story of precarious millennial existence – and Matthew Rice’s time-stamped Plastic – a beautifully observed collection of poems swept straight from the factory floor – the workplace becomes a rich site of narrative: full of humour, humanity and one or two hauntings.

In conversation with award-winning writer, bookseller and Birmingham Literature Festival 2026 Programmer, Clive Judd.