H. Gareth Gavin was born in Birmingham in 1984. His fiction has appeared in journals such as Hotel and Short Fiction, and he also published work that moves between the creative and the critical. His short story, ‘Home Death’, was longlisted for the Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize, and Midland: A Novel Out of Time was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize. He currently lives in Manchester, where he works in the Centre for New Writing and also teaches a course on trans theory. Never Was is his second novel.