LOCKS: A Story Based on True Events

Product Information

But within days of his arrival, still wearing his boots from St John's market, Ashleigh found himself in the "Strong Room" of a tough Jamaican prison for young men. He spent his 17th birthday inside what he describes as an "underground dungeon", eventually getting bail and fleeing the country while the Jamaican authorities searched for him at the airport. Ashleigh says his experiences in Jamaica shaped him and aged 21 he decided to pursue his dream of becoming a writer. All in all, a both interesting and intriguing book that I feel privileged to have read. His star shines brightly in my world and, if this is a debut book, I really can't wait to see what's next on the menu... I’ll have this book in my head forever and I’ll never hear the word Jamaica again and not think of Aeon.

Now in its eighth year, this well-established festival, taking place between Friday 6 and Sunday 8 October, will feature a range of inspirational discussions with an exceptional line up of authors.

Our courses

It wasn't a slur - there were different systems of racial classification there but it was about having your identity stripped from you. Former film critic for The Independent, Liverpool local Anthony Quinn will also be making two appearances at the Literary Festival: On Friday 6 October at 6.30pm in Conversation with award winning author Jonathan Coe, and on Sunday 8 October at 5.30pm with former Everton and Tranmere footballer Pat Nevin. Nugent has written for the Everyman Theatre, Newcastle’s Live Theatre and is a special adviser for Shakespeare North Playhouse. He is also a director at RiseUP CIC, where he uses his own life experiences to support prisons, schools, the long-term unemployed and those at risk of offending within the wider community. Picador has acquired a “funny and self-deprecating" novel about growing up by debut author Ashleigh Nugent.

Within a very short space of time, Aeon finds himself in trouble, he's stabbed, arrested, and put in juvenile detention, so yep, things aren't exactly going to plan.... I didn't realise I would then be on an eight-year journey to write a book - I messed it up, entered competitions, learnt and then got to the point where I felt I had produced something of worth."

Select type

Ashleigh told the ECHO in 2020: "I was a mixed race kid in a white leafy suburb on the outskirts of Liverpool. Ashleigh went on to perform with local rap groups, and carried out projects with the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, working with both classical music and rap. He also became an avid reader. These painful, aggravating experiences led him to Jamaica, a place he hoped for change. Instead he found himself mugged, stabbed and in prison, having watched his friend drown. In Jamaica he was the White boy. Joining Jenny and Ashley at the festival is Liverpool-born Aidan Cottrell-Boyce, who will be discussing his debut novel, The End of Nightwork on Sunday 8 October at 1pm.

What to say about this book? It’s such a difficult one to review because there are so many layers to excavate in this story and they are so hard to convey, it is really a book you need to experience for yourself before you can understand what it is really about. NB. At the time of this interview I was one chapter in, and there’s nothing like interviewing an author while you’re knee deep in their first novel. I’m now two chapters in because I read painfully slowly, but it’s an outstanding story, told by a brilliant artist, musician and teacher. The place was for lads 21 and under and I spent my 17th birthday there. There was no running water, toilets that don't flush." Nugent has written of his love for Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925), and you can see it in his novel’s fluid narrative style and interwoven chronologies. Eventually, in Jamaica, Aeon comes to understand his name – being himself descended from slaves who escaped to form Maroon communities – and uncovers a history that transcends the “racist, white-washed version” of history he has been taught at school. But still, when it comes to love, and to loss, and to how to navigate a world that wilfully misunderstands him, he has a lot to learn. A: I suppose there is that, but rather than writing a stage narrative I’m telling bits of stories from the book, and the links in between are me talking to the audience. Obviously it’s a show, but they’re getting some of my personality.It seems it was the person who signed for my bail, he worked for the American Embassy, and he was in the terminal with the cops looking for me. Once on that plane, in the air, it was over." A: I’ve got two kids and I run a business, so it comes to an evening, I get the kids in bed, and about half nine, I’ll jump into the office. And I’ve been doing that continually for all that time. He said: "When it was happening I thought once I survive this I always wanted to be a writer. But I hated school and left with nothing. The whole education system and figures of authority were my enemy. I was in trouble, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy - becoming the thing they tell you you are.

What I loved was the injection of humour into this, at times, harrowing journey. It really added something else to the otherwise tense read.

Our story

Such a lot of people write a book and get it out there, and write another one, and maybe five books later they’ve learnt the craft. Whereas I’ve been trying to learn the craft on the first book because it was so important to me that I wasn’t prepared to just leave it unfinished. So I’ve had to learn how to do this on the job. After several run-ins with the police, disaffected with school, and experiencing racism on a daily basis, the teenage Ashleigh, whose dad was from Jamaica, decided to travel there himself to understand more about his roots. Ashleigh, who experienced exactly that, spent his 17th birthday imprisoned in the mountains of Jamaica. I’m not offended by that. I really appreciate people being honest because not only do I get to think through it and explain it somebody, but I also get to work through it in my own mind and question how I feel about these issues, and I get to keep studying and educating myself.