Martin MacInnes : In Ascension | 5th April @ 7pm

Join us to celebrate the release of In Ascension by Martin MacInnes. 

‘I don't think I've ever read a book that was as profound and moving at every scale – the cell, the family, the universe. In Ascension is a remarkable, expansive, stunning achievement.’ Karen Joy Fowler

Leigh grew up in Rotterdam, drawn to the waterfront as an escape from her unhappy home life and volatile father. Enchanted by the undersea world of her childhood, she excels in marine biology, travelling the globe to study ancient organisms. When a trench is discovered in the Atlantic Ocean, Leigh joins the exploration team, hoping to find evidence of the earth’s first life forms – what she instead finds calls into question everything we know about our own beginnings.

Exploring the natural world with the wonder and reverence we usually reserve for the stars, In Ascension is a compassionate, deeply inquisitive epic that reaches outward to confront the greatest questions of existence, looks inward to illuminate the smallest details of the human heart, and shows how – no matter how far away we might be and how much we have lost hope – we will always attempt to return to the people and places we call home.

‘An awe-inspiring and gripping epic’
Graeme Macrae Burnet

Martin MacInnes was born in Inverness in 1983. He is the author of Infinite Ground and Gathering Evidence, and he is the winner of a Somerset Maugham Award, the Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award, and a Manchester Fiction Prize. In 2021 he was selected by the Guardian/British Council as One of Ten Writers Shaping the UK's Future. He lives in Edinburgh. Martin is available for interviews and events.

Martin will be joined in conversation with Heather Parry, a Glasgow-based writer, editor, event chair and podcast host. Her short stories have appeared internationally in numerous magazines and books. Her fiction explores self-deception, transformation, the grotesque and the body. Her novel Orpheus Builds a Girl was released in 2022. She is the co-founder of Scottish literary magazine Extra Teeth.

As always tickets are free but must be booked in advance and you can help us plan the night by pre-ordering your copy in advance