Matthew Holness is Garth Marenghi

Matthew Holness, local author, Perrier Award winning actor, comedian, director, and creator of the one and only Garth Marenghi, is coming to Norwich Book Festival for an evening of laughter, literature and looming terror.

For the first half of the evening, Matthew will discuss his work and craft with crime-writer Tom Benn. He’ll reveal the secrets to his creating cult hits and starring in legendary sitcoms, and the art of making characters memorable.

In the second half, Garth Marenghi himself will take to the stage in a swirl of ominous darkness (and/or torchlight). The lights will flicker (for a bit) as he reads brand new work never before presented to an audience, and a chill will (ideally) settle in the air. The Lord High Petrifier will narrate the petrifying words he alone has scribed down in Incarcerat and Terrortome, and too many others to mention (though mainly those two).  Dare you attend in both senses of the word? I.e turn up and also listen?

Sure to sell out straight-away – book now!

Tickets £20

Garth Marenghi

Garth Marenghi was born in the past, graduated from his local comprehensive (now bulldozed) with some O-levels in subjects. He taught for nine years at his local library reading group before becoming a full-time horror writer. He has published numerous novels of terror (too numerous to list, nay count), over five hundred short stories, and has edited thirty anthologies of his own work, which have all received the Grand Master of Darkdom Award. He wrote, directed and starred in Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace for the Peruvian market, which subsequently aired on Channel 4 and has not been repeated due to its radical and polemic content. He commenced work on Terrortome during the late 1980s, continued on it alone and unaided by editors throughout the 1990s and on into the early 2000s, then the mid 2000s, and has only now found a publisher brave enough to unleash its chilling portendings. He is an honorary fellow.

Following the massive success of his longlost novel Terrortome, Sunday Times Bestseller & Archduke O’ Darkdom, Garth Marenghi has returned with his latest masterpiece, Incarcerat, this Halloween.

Matthew Holness

Matthew Holness is a Perrier Award winning actor, comedian, writer and director, best known for his role as a fictional horror writer and actor Garth Marenghi, who he co-created with Richard Ayoade. GARTH MARENGHI’S DARKPLACE (Channel 4)is a cult hit. Other acting credits include BACK (C4) with David Mitchell and Robert Webb, short films SMUTCH and A GUN FOR GEORGE (both written and directed by Matthew), YEAR OF THE RABBIT (C4), TOAST OF LONDON (C4), FRIDAY NIGHT DINNER (C4), BLOODS (Channel 5), WE ARE LADY PARTS (Channel 4), and legendary sitcom THE OFFICE (BBC) and THE HAUNTING OF BLY MANOR (Netflix).

Tom Benn

Tom Benn is an award-winning author, screenwriter, and Associate Professor in Crime Writing at UEA. His first novel, The Doll Princess (Cape), was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Portico Prize, and longlisted for the CWA’s John Creasey Dagger. His other novels include Chamber Music (Cape) and Trouble Man (Cape). He won runner-up prize in the Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize, and his essays and fiction have appeared in Granta and the Paris Review. He won the BFI’s iWrite scheme for emerging screenwriters. His first film, 'Real Gods Require Blood', premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, and was nominated for Best Short Film at the BFI London Film Festival. His fourth novel, Oxblood (Bloomsbury), was longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, the CWA's Gold Dagger, and in 2023 won the Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award. He has new fiction forthcoming in The Book of Manchester (Comma Press, 2024) and Bog People: A Working-Class Anthology of Folk Horror (Chatto, 2025).