Patrick Neate is the author of seven novels, including Twelve Bar Blues, which won the Whitbread (now Costa) Novel Award, and two books of non-fiction, including Where You’re At, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. His film scripts include an adaptation of his own novel City of Tiny Lights, starring Riz Ahmed and Billie Piper, and pianist James Rhodes’s best-selling memoir Instrumental. He is also the founder of Book Slam, London’s first and greatest literary shindig.