Shaun Hand

You know that feeling you get when you’re stood freezing on the Welsh moors, wrapped in a cloak you got cheap off eBay, your singer miming backwards in a bathtub as you make a video for your band’s song that’s been used in an American teen drama and become the unofficial theme tune to a podcast about Sasquatch?

Shaun Patrick Hand, an author and musician from Birmingham, knows all about it.

Things weren’t always that strange for our intrepid late-starter. After drifting into various dead-ends, Shaun began studying English at night school aged 22—to get some time off from the pub he was working at six nights a week as much as anything else.

After going to university in Wolverhampton and graduating with a First in Creative Writing, he promptly continued to work in local pubs and bars, using his spare time to procrastinate, make music with his band FABRIK and, eventually, begin writing books. His literary career kicked off in 2016 with Pop Art Poems: The Music of The Jam, widely regarded as one of the best books ever written about the group.

Shaun’s first novel, The Sadness of The King George, a millennial coming-of-age story, will be published in February 2021 by Bad Press Ink. His first poetry collection, The New Brutalism, made in collaboration with photo artist Tom Hicks, is available through Kates Hill Press. His band FABRIK have released two albums, City Islands and Impermanence, building a following in Europe and America.

Now a full-time freelance writer, he currently lives in Wolverhampton with his wife, daughter, cat, and record collection.