​Showcasing startling writing talents as they emerge is part of MK Lit Fest's mission. To a catalogue of rising names that includes Preti Taneja, Sam Byers, Mary Jean Chan, Andrew McMillan, Elly Williams, we are delighted to add another - Paul David Gould.

'The venue was the canteen block of the Red Hammer Cement Works. It was the usual set-up: way out of town, secretive directions to get there, and disco lights blazing...’ 

Moscow, 1993. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union have brought unimaginable change to Russia. With this change come new freedoms: freedom to travel abroad and to befriend Westerners, freedom to make money, and even the freedom for an underground gay scene to take root. Encouraged by the new climate of openness, twenty-one-year-old Kostya ventures out of the closet and resolves to pursue his dreams: to work in the theatre and to find love as his idol  Tchaikovsky never could. Those dreams, however, lead to tragedy...

About Paul David Gould

Paul David Gould grew up on a Huddersfield council estate and studied Russian at the University of Birmingham. Paul worked as a journalist in Russia in the early nineties, and his experiences have informed his debut novel, Last Dance at the Discotheque for Deviants, one of the first titles in Unbound Books' new imprint for debut writers of colour: Unbound Firsts. He works as a sub-editor at the Financial Times, for whom he still occasionally writes about Russia.