Literary Events Summer 2011

Some more literary happenings flitting through the transom of my mind:

I'm going to be moderating an event for Creative Trafford called Approaching Agents and Publishers on Monday June 27, from 1-4pm at The Waterside in Sale. It's a rare opportunity to talk to some very well known agents and editors (John Jarrold, Sophie Buchan and Ollie Munson) who will be coming up from London specifically for this event. We'll be covering everything from how to prepare your manuscript to the latest trends in publishing; it's going to be a fantastic opportunity for North West writers who are serious about getting their work published. There's a limited number of tickets (£8/6)and they're going fast, so booking soon is recommended on 0161 912 5616.

A couple of calls for submissions to mention here: Comma Press is looking for stories for its new collection, Reveal (deadline July 1st) and CRESC and the centre for New Writing are running a competition, Framing the City, for the best creative writing that reflects change in the city of Manchester (deadline August 6).

Finally, I'm a little sad to say that submissions are now closed for Rainy City Stories, the website I edit that published new writing linked to locations in Manchester on a map of the city. It's been lots of fun and I'm proud of all the amazing writing we've published over the last two years, much of it from new writers. But it's time for me and my partners in the organisation that runs RCS, Openstories (Chris Horkan of Hey! Manchester/Oh Digital fame, and Cathy Bolton, director of Manchester Literature Festival) to turn our attention to our next project, The Real Story. Details on that one coming very soon...

New books: short shorts, werewolves and babies

The three new Manchester books this go-round have very little in common. If they were people, you'd definitely never catch them at the same party. But they're all good in their own very different ways.

First up is Nik Perring's book of short stories. Not So Perfect (Roast), is a little thing, a pint-sized but reassuringly thick book. The stories are also on the more diminutive side of short, but pack a lot of punch into their smaller word counts. One of them, The Angel in the Car Park, first appeared in Rainy City Stories, the Manchester creative writing website I edit, so I was already a fan of Nik's writing. And, as expected, I really enjoyed the book, full of offbeat characters and stripped-down, almost anecdotal narratives that are like short stories boiled down to their most concentrated essence.

And now for something completely different:


Tom Fletcher's book The Leaping (Quercus). It starts out among a gang of friends who share a house in Manchester and work at a mind-numbing call centre, living out their post-uni lives in scenes that'll be very familiar to many of the readers of this blog. Then the action moves up to The Lakes, and that's when things get very weird indeed. Yes, this is a werewolf novel, and a very good one too. It scared the bejeezus out of me, probably because Fletcher never resorts to schlocky horror gimmicks but approaches the material in a new way. It's hard to explain, but if my experience is anything to go by the book unravels into your head like some kind of psychedelic trip. It gets under your skin and creates an altered reality, a real sense of otherness and a way of life that is utterly alien and completely convincing.

Sheesh, I'm getting scared just remembering reading that book. So let's move swiftly from freaky psychedelic werewolves to babies. Yes, babies. Manchester babies, to be more specific, as the third book I want to recommend is the new edition of Babies in the City, Manchester's own where-to-go-and-what-to-do guide for Mancunian childwranglers. Their first book has been indispensable since my daughter's arrival a couple of years ago, and the revised edition has thoughtfully added in more options that will appeal to older kids.



It's all here: obscure-but-cool museums on the fringes of Greater Manchester, parks and walks, indoor play areas, classes, kid-friendly eats in the city centre, baby-friendly movie screenings... the list goes on. Only occasionally do I disagree with the reviews of the writers, and mainly because I think I'm a lot more picky about food than they are (yes, Heaton Park cafe, I'm looking at you.) But that's really my only small gripe. If you know someone with a new baby, this is an ideal present.

Reading, writing and listening

Ah, October. Plenty to blog about on here at the moment, but not much time to do it. That's because my blogging energies are currently divided between the Manchester Blog Awards blog and the reinvigorated Manchester Literature Festival blog (not forgetting Creative Tourist), with whatever's left trying feebly to keep up with the three Twitter accounts I seem to have acquired. Ain't social media grand?

Anyway, while I'm here, I'll stick in a reminder to come to the blog awards, which is on Wednesday Oct 21 at Band on the Wall. It's hard to pick other literature festival events to recommend as so many are enticing this year, but I'm looking forward to Eoin Colfer's And Another Thing launch tomorrow. Yep, that's the sequel to Douglas Adams revered Hitchiker's Guide series - I haven't read or heard any of it yet. But whatever the book's like, you've got to respect the man for voluntarily exposing himself to so much fanboy "how dare you step to The Master" bitching.

Then I'm going to catch the much-missed No Point in Not Being Friends Monday night at Matt and Phred's, and Tuesday is our Rainy City Stories Live tour. I wish I could go to the entire Short Weekend, but I have a scheduling conflict involving the other literature festival launching this week, the excellent Lancaster Litfest. If anyone's up that way next weekend I'm going to be reading my own writings at the launch of Flax's Mostly Truthful anthology of creative nonfiction, along with some Manchester blogfriends. I'm really excited because this is my first creative writing to be published since sixth grade. Yay! Anyway, it kicks off at 2pm in the Storey Auditorium on Saturday Oct 24 - info here.

Rainy City Stories June workshops

Attention writerly folk: The Rainy City Stories project has teamed up with the lovely people at Commonword to run some creative writing workshops in Greater Manchester on the theme of writing about place.

How do the best writers successfully evoke the unique feeling of a place? How can descriptions and telling details be used to transport the reader to a particular setting? Writer Suzanne Batty will help participants explore new tactics and techniques in the two-hour session.

Suzanne Batty has published two collections of poems, most recently The Barking Thing (Bloodaxe Books). She is an experienced workshop leader who teaches Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University and is co-editor of poetry journal Rain Dog.

This workshop is suitable for all levels of writer. Places are free, but limited to 12 people per workshop, so early booking is advised. It will be offered in four locations:

Stockport Art Gallery Saturday June 13, 2-4 pm
To book a place, please ring 0161 474 4453

Bury Fusiliers’ Museum Wednesday June 24, 7-9 pm
To book a place, please ring 01706 823264

Hyde Library Thursday June 25, 1-3 pm
To book a place, please ring 0161 342 4450

Standish Library Saturday June 27, 10am-12pm
To book a place, please ring 01257 400496

Rainy City Love Stories winner

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THIS JUST IN...


We've just announced the winner of our Rainy City Stories Valentine's Day Competition. Craig Melville is the lucky man - his story The Shortest, The Coldest took the prize. For more details, and to find out who the four finalists were, check it out here on the Rainy City Stories site.

Rainy City Love Stories contest

Welcome to 2009, our shiny new year. I have about a billion things to blog about, but they will all have to wait 'til tomorrow. I can tell you this, though: We're running a Valentine's day themed contest on Rainy City Stories. Yeah, I know the holiday was created by the greeting card industry and is just an excuse for hapless couples to be overcharged for bad food served on pink doilies once a year. We're celebrating with writing. See below (and apologies if you've already gotten this in another format since I'm cutting and pasting here. You people can stop reading now.)

Rainy City Stories wants your love. We also want your love stories and poems. In honour of Valentine’s Day, we’re offering a wonderful prize for the best Rainy City Love Story we receive in the next month.

Whether you're an old romantic or a cynic, we invite you to tell us your tales (real or imagined) of falling in, out, or over love in our city. But don’t restrict yourselves to traditional romances; we’re willing to interpret “love story” in a wider sense. The winning submission could be about a more abstract kind of love. It could even be an anti-love poem, or a rant against all things loved-up
The winning piece of writing will be published on our website on the eve of Valentine’s Day amid a shower of cupids and lace bows and twinkly-eyed kittens. And the winner will receive a big fat £50 Borders gift voucher (the kind of thing that really makes us writer-types swoon), kindly donated by our friends at the Manchester Literature Festival.

Here’s the lowdown: Entries must be submitted by close of business on Tuesday, February 10. Please submit short stories or poems through the cunning mechanism on our website and put the words “love contest entrant” at the top of the story. Entrants should only submit their own original work, and writing that has not previously been published. Also, by entering the competition you grant RCS the right to publish the piece online.

(Picture by Gregoire Chabrol.)

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