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You're listening to Late Night Woman's Hour, and we are at the Birmingham Literary Festival with my guest, Sally Hughes.

Hi, hello.

Hello.

And Katlyn Moran, welcome.

Hello.

And Nadia Shereen, hello to you.

Hello.

Three wonderful authoresses here at the Birmingham Literary Festival.

We are in Brom, in the Midlands.

Katlin and Nadia, you both grew up in the region. And I think I want to start with asking what it means to you and how it's kind of shaped your worldview. Well, yeah, I'm on our territory

now, Bab, so welcome. Well, the thing about Midlands is, like, kind of, I remember growing up, the whole thing was

actually in the north is hard and romantic and, you know, kind of like wind-swept moors and

kind of, you know, people there are really real and they say what they think, and then

southerners are kind of, you know, sort of soft and effeminate, but they're kind of artistic

and they, you know, they have these kind of like amazing artistic lives and stuff. And then the Midlands, what have we got? This is like, when you're growing up,

you're like, well, what are we? We're just in the middle. We were never cool. No. Which is a

blessing and a curse, but we were never, we understood that from me. You got heavy metal and

heavy industry, right? Yeah. Yeah, those are our things. William Heavy. The thing I noticed about all the bands that come from the Midlands is that they all have massive myths around them.

Like if you look at ELO, the way they dress, they come from space.

You've got Led Zeppelin, you pretend they're kind of like backwards blues men's and kind of rock and roll avatars and stuff.

You get Duran Duran, who are these kind of like, you know, playboard dittalants and stuff. Slade, who have got mirrors on the hats, everybody dresses up from the Midlands. You would never go, I'm a Midlands band. You have to dress up and pretend you come from space or from

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