Mo Fanning is a West Midlands-based author of five novels of warm, sharp commercial fiction. His novel ‘Husbands’ won the 2025 IndieReader Discovery Award for LGBTQ+ Fiction, he was a Page Turner Awards finalist in both 2024 and 2025, and his work has been translated into Italian and Spanish. His new novel, ‘Lisa Doyle is Absolutely Fine’ (Spring Street Books, 18 June 2026), is a contemporary romcom about a thirty-something Manchester box office worker who invents a fiancé to keep up with friends getting married, and the small lies that hold her life together. Compared by readers to Beth O’Leary, Marian Keyes and Mhairi McFarlane, it sits at the heart of the UK’s biggest fiction-buying audience.
The proposed event, ‘Are You Absolutely Fine?’, is a 45-minute author talk that goes beyond a standard reading. It pairs a short extract with an in-conversation Q&A exploring why “absolutely fine” is the most common lie we tell; the white lies, female friendship and quiet grief at the centre of the novel; living life (in Mo’s case as a gay man) with family held at arm’s length; and the craft of writing romcom that is funny without losing emotional credibility.
Mo is a confident speaker, also appearing at ‘Queer the Shelves’ in Nottingham this June. The event format would suit The Huddle, The Snug or the ticketed programme equally well. Mo is also open to contributing to panel events on commercial fiction, comedy writing or queer voices in mainstream publishing.