Literary magazine madness

New literary magazines are springing up like mushrooms all over the Northwest (last week Mancubist tipped me off to two more I didn't know about.) But there are plenty of established mags still out there doing their thing, like ... uh, really big mushrooms. Sorry, it's early and I'm out of coffee.

Anyway, check this out: Succour Magazine will be hosting an evening of reading and drinks in Manchester to mark the launch of its eighth issue, 'Icons,' featuring new fiction and poetry from both established and unsung writers. It's at the Briton's Protection pub on November 28 at 8. Anyone welcome to attend or read. They're also calling for submissions for the next issue on the theme of Fantasies. More info here.

Swings and Roundabouts (creative saviours of the northwest) have a shiny new website where you can download all of the stuff from their first six issues. It's been on a bit of a hiatus for the last year, but is still very much alive and kicking and looking to publish new stuff.

Transmission no. 12 is out and looking good - I really enjoyed this issue, especially the profile of Joe Stretch and Chris Killen's piece on Richard Brautigan. Editor Graham Foster says the magazine will be making a pit stop for a while to rest on its laurels and ponder the future before it returns to us looking tanned, rested and ten years younger.

Blogging workshops: Autumn 2008

Non-bloggers: Were you so inspired by the awesome display of blogging might Wednesday night that you're determined to start your own blog? If so, you're in luck: Chris of Mancubist and I are running two blogging workshops aimed at total beginners*.

(*You should know how to use a computer. You should know how to use a mouse and how to navigate the internet with it. But that's about it.)

Two sessions:
Saturday 22 November, 10-12am Gorton Library
Saturday 29 November 10-12am Crumpsall Library


And... we're doing something new this year: a blog lab. It's an open surgery for people who are already blogging but want some help making their blog all shiny and exciting. Drop in and we'll show you how to pimp it up with the freshest widgets, and also give you some ideas for new and startling things you can do with your content.

Saturday 8 November, 1-3pm
Manchester Digital Development Agency, Portland Street
(drop in whenever you like during the session, but please let us know you’re coming.)

The workshops and blog lab are free, but numbers are limited so please book. You can ring the Literature Festival office at 0161 236 5555 or email admin AT manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk. Please let us know when booking if you have any accessibility needs.

2008 Manchester Blog Awards: The Winners

What a great night! Thanks to our talented readers, to everyone who came and packed out Matt and Phred's, and to those who helped make it happen in other ways, either by blogging about it or otherwise helping us spread the love.

And the winners are...

Best New Blog:
Follow the Yellow Brick Road

Judges: "It seems honest, and charming. The personality of the blogger comes across well, and I like how varied it is."

Best Writing on a Blog:
Every Day I Lie a Little

Judges: "Beautifully written and a pleasure on the eyes. I really like Jenn's style, sense of perspective and humour."

Best Arts and Culture Blog:
Winner: Northernights

Judges:"Very Manchester. Gives Mancubist a run for its money."

Best Personal Blog:
Travels with my baby

Judges: "The personality really comes across, and, considering it's subject, it really isn't very 'twee' and is engaging even if you’ve never held a baby."

Best City or Neighbourhood blog:
Manchester Buses

Judges: "Blogging is about passion and information. No one could ever accuse Manchester Buses of not believing in what they write. I've also used this site to gather news!"

CityLife.co.uk Manchester Blog of the Year:

Travels with my Baby

I'll try to link to all of the (sure to be many) accounts of what happened last night here: Check out The Mancunian Way

Leave a comment with your link if you want me to add yours. And if you have photos to share, Alan at MDDA has created a Flickr group here. The picture above is from Sam Easterby-Smith, who has many lovely pictures of the night up on his site.

One week 'til the Manchester Blog Awards

So why should you come to the blog awards on Wednesday night?

You should come because we'll have all four of this year's best writing nominees in the hizzouse to give us a sampling of their wordy wares: Sally Cook (Nine Chains to the Moon), Socrates Adams-Florou (Chicken and Pies), Jenn Ashworth (Every day I lie a little) and Maureen Ward, ameneusis to Miss EP Niblock (Diary of a Bluestocking) will all read.

Maria Roberts, last year's personal blog winner for Single Mother on the Verge, will read from her forthcoming book based on her blog. It's due out in the spring from Penguin and we're beaming with pride.

Literary dynamo and cat fancier Chris Killen, whose blog Day of Moustaches won last year's coveted best writing award, will be reading from his new book The Bird Room (Canongate). Then I'll ask him some pertinent questions, and we'll have a Q&A so you can ask him some impertinent ones.

Music bloggers jonthebeef of Black Country Grammar and James Yer Mam! will be manning the wheels of steel during the evening's musical interludes and have hand-selected rare and strange tunes for your personal delectation.

And of course you get to find out who won this year's six blog awards, including the extra-special CityLife Manchester Blog of the Year award.

If you're coming you don't have to book a ticket in advance, but you can here if you're the sort of person who likes to make extra sure you're going to get in. (We had some problems before with the booking website saying it was sold out. It isn't.) Otherwise, show up with £2 in hand. You should come to Matt and Phred's Jazz Club on Tib Street after 6:30 and before 7pm on Wednesday, Oct. 22.

Pictured above: Ali's bird room.

CityLife Blog of the Year

Holy cats! Stop the presses!

The folks at CityLife.co.uk have stepped in at the eleventh hour and upped the ante for Mancunian blogstars. They're sponsoring a new blog award this year: Manchester Blog of the Year. Our judging panel will pick the winner from among the shortlisted blogs. And the winner gets a big fat £300.

Yeah, £300. I know. It's a lot, isn't it?

The winner will be announced at the blog awards night on the 22nd of October.

I don't know about you, but I'm dead excited.

Rainy City Stories

I'm really delighted to announce the launch of a project that Chris (Mancubist) and I have been cooking up on the sly for some time now:

Rainy City Stories is a website that publishes new writing set in Manchester. It uses a Google map of the city to organise stories or poetry linked to particular places. Readers can click on a place marked by the little cloud icon to read a piece of writing associated with that spot.

Who can write for this site? Anybody can. We're open to all submissions of unpublished work. To get things rolling, we've commissioned pieces from four outstanding Mancunian writers: Jackie Kay, Mike Duff, Nicholas Royle and Rajeev Balasubramanyam. They're up now - go take a look.

But now we want YOU to send us your stories, poems or bits of memoir. If we like them, we'll put them on the map.

We've got big plans for the future, too.

We'll be publishing more commissioned writing in 2009, and expanding our site to include photography, graphics, and audio and video readings to accompany the words. A series of related writing workshops and a live literature event featuring some of the Rainy City Stories writers will be part of the 2009 Manchester Literature Festival. And we're investigating a fantastically exciting new possibility that would involve some of the best writing from the website, but we can't say much more about that yet.

Erm, what else should we tell you? The project is part of the Manchester Literature Festival's Freeplay programme, and it's funded by the good people of Arts Council England. Chris designed the site on Wordpress and is in charge of the techy stuff. I'll be doing the editing. No ferrets were harmed in the making of this website.

I'd love to hear what people think about the site so far - if you have some thoughts, leave a comment or email me at themanchizzle AT gmail DOT com.

The Manchester Review launches

It's always good to see a new literary journal starting up, but to my mind this one couldn't be more exciting. The University of Manchester’s Centre for New Writing this week launches The Manchester Review, edited by the Centre's co-directors John McAuliffe and Ian McGuire. Most intriguingly, "it will depart from the medium’s conventions by existing only online, with new issues appearing each spring and autumn. These will often include broadcasts of new music, public debates and video pieces, as well as visual art, fiction and poetry."

The first issue is up now, with work from the likes of Paul Muldoon, Ali Smith, John Banville, Matt Welton and Chris Killen. Some more about the publication, from its website:

“The Manchester Review takes its cue from their proactive promotion of new writing, but uses online media to show and sponsor the interplay of poetry, fiction, music, visual art and essays by new and established practitioners. We hope that it will find new readers and audiences for exciting and innovative creative work, which is steeped in traditional virtues.

“This will be accompanied by the Review’s lively critical blog, which will take the temperature of - and maybe sometimes set the agenda for – the contemporary arts in the UK and beyond.”

Manchester is becoming quite the place for online literary endeavour. It seems like every week or so I add another couple of lit bloggers to the blogroll. We're blessed the with Literature Festival's geek-friendly Freeplay programme, and blogtastic live lit nights like no point in not being friends, with its tech-aided readings, Facebook group and antics on youtube. Even more traditional publishers and publications like Comma Press and Transmission are increasingly doing stuff online.

And new paper publications all seem to all have blogs, often as their main web presence. One such is the lovely Wufniks, started by students at the aforementioned writing school, with a fantastic tagline: "a mishegoss of shiny new words."

2008 Manchester Blog Awards Shortlist

Here is the 2008 Manchester Blog Awards Shortlist. We had 107 separate nominations this year, coming in from as far away as San Francisco. There was such a wealth of great stuff that it was harder than ever to do the shortlisting, particularly in the Best Writing on a Blog category (by far our most nominated-for.)

The force is strong with you, Manchester bloggers. Many thanks to all those who nominated.


Best New Blog:

Dear Kitty
Coco LaVerne
Follow The Yellow Brick Road
14sandwiches


Best Writing on a Blog:

Diary of a Bluestocking
Every day I lie a little
Nine chains to the moon
Chicken and Pies

Best Arts and Culture Blog:

Scatterdrum
Quit This Pampered Town
Northernights
Max Dunbar

Best Personal Blog:

Travels with my baby
Single Mother on the Verge
Follow the Yellow Brick Road
40three

Best Neighbourhood Blog:

Hyde Daily Photo
Mancubist
Lady Levenshulme
Manchester Bus

This will now go to our panel of judges, which includes Sarah Hartley, blogger and online editor at the Manchester Evening News, Dave Carter of Manchester Digital Development Agency, Richard Fair of BBC Manchester and author Chris Killen, winner of last year's Best Writing on a Blog award.

The winners (who each get £50 and a large metal studded belt that is very heavy) will be announced at the blog awards event Weds Oct 22 at Matt and Phred's Jazz Club.

New blogs: The not from here edition

Here's a whole heap of new blog goodness for your Friday afternoon delectation.

Ken and Belly is the very engaging personal blog of Kelly, an American expat in Mancunia, who like myself wishes you could get Annie’s Organic Mac N Cheese here in the UK. And through this blog I found out about the Expat Blogs network, which has a few blogs right here in Manchester: Canadian expat Britt Breu writes Brittunia in Mancunia, and there's Singaporean Alex's World, as well as blogs written in Japanese and Portuguese. Guess I should add this one to the list, though I feel less and less like an expat these days.

Abbas Ali writes about films over at The Movie Hack Pretty impressive, with lots of Top Five Best... lists and a preview of the London Film Festival. And don't call me Shirley!

Anthony Richardson, who is just starting a Creative Writing MA at Manchester, has set up a lit blog. He writes: "The blog is called Anthony Richardson Writes Stories That Are Funny, which is actually sort of an arrogant title come to think of it. It isn't meant to be that way. I have all my short stories up there, plus I am writing a short story a week for a year, which started this week." He also likes to redo classic album covers using Microsoft Paint, and you can see those on the blog too.

14 sandwiches bills itself as a technology-media-music party for your brain. Martin Bryant writes it, and for the record he has not eaten 14 sandwiches in one sitting.

An intriguing new group blog with a manifesto: "The LRM (Loiterers Resistance Movement)is a Manchester based collective of artists and activists interested in psychogeography. We can’t agree on what that means but we all like plants growing out of the side of buildings, urban exploration, drinking tea and getting lost. Gentrification, advertising and blandness make us sad. We believe there is magic in the mancunian rain. Our city is wonderful and made for more than shopping. We want to reclaim it for play and revolutionary fun…"


Expletive Undeleted is freelance journalist Smith3000's collection of reworked longer versions of published interviews and features. "It’s mainly music stuff at the moment, but that will probably change over time," he says. He also writes about older music at a section of the site called Hip Replacement.

Languishing in Levenshulme is a personal blog written by a resident of what has to be the best-represented nabe on our blogroll. Languishing has lived there for 7 years, and says: "I love it but kind of wish it was Hebden Bridge. I think some residents of Levenshulme would appreciate my point here. I have met some of the most fantastic friends here - but damn it I still live next to a thundering arterial road with a back garden the size of a budgie's tongue; and the closest I get to birds twittering and wildlife is the minging mice that scutter across my floor at 2am and the flying vermin (fattened on dropped Saturday night kebab) that my dog loves to chase around the Fallowfield loop. Despite all that, my heart belongs to Levenshulme." Awww.

Not a new blog, but a new site to link to: Manclopedia. "Manclopedia is a free, open content encyclopedia project operated by Hive Magazine. Launched in September 2008 it attempts to collect and summarize every aspect of Greater Manchester (including its history, culture, politics, people and places) with the aim of becoming the most comprehensive collection of information regarding this great city!" Nice idea, though there's not much on there at the moment. Any takers?

Short Stories at Friends Meeting House

Here's a cool event I only just heard about: On Saturday, Manchester Libraries are hosting Short Stories, an afternoon featuring writers, publishers and producers.

Workshop leaders include Frank Cottrell Boyce, David Constantine, Elizabeth Baines, Ra Page and Polly Thomas. This event is for anyone who loves to read short stories or would like to know more about writing for publication or radio.

It's at The Friends’ Meeting House this Saturday from 1-5pm, Tickets £8 in advance. For more info/booking go here.

No point in not being friends

Or if you prefer its gloriously full name, There's no point in not being friends with someone if you want to be friends with them. That's the new monthly reading night started by ace Manchester litbloggers Chris Killen (Day of Moustaches) and Sally Cook (Nine Chains to the Moon.) They have scheduled readers as well as open-mic slots on the night, which seems quite inclusive and as friendly as its name suggests. The third one is coming up on Tuesday at 8 and the lineup looks great. I've been meaning to get there for the last two but haven't and will make a concerted effort to get there this time, dammit.

Here's the rundown from the cats at No point...

"please come to the UPSTAIRS MUSIC HALL at the Deaf Institute on Tuesday 23rd of September for the third 'there's no point in not being friends with someone if you want to be friends with them' reading night.

we have lots of readers booked: Joe Stretch, John McAuliffe, David Gaffney, Jenn Ashworth, Thomas Fletcher, Socrates Adams-Florou, Sally Cook, Nicholas Murgatroyd, and loads more ... also, the american writer Tao Lin will be doing the 'video reading' and Matthew Davis will be performing a 'comedy monologue'.

And, as always, there'll be a few open-mic slots available on the night. if you've got something you'd like to read, just bring it along and speak to one of us. it should be good fun, and it's free to get in. it'll be the first night in the big upstairs room -- there'll be lots more space than in the basement, but it's also a much bigger room to fill so please come along and show your support."

You can check out the No point blog here, and they're also on facebook here.

Reading Capital

This just in... A fortnightly reading group dedicated to reading Karl Marx’s Capital Vol. 1: A Critique of Political Economy will begin on 6 October 2008 at The Salford Restoration Office.

Individuals are invited to join the group to read Marx’s Capital Vol. 1 in conjunction with David Harvey’s online lectures. Harvey, a respected academic and writer, has been teaching open classes on the book for 40 years, and the current set of lectures given at the City University of New York have been filmed and made available on-line. The lectures are accessible to all at anytime but the fortnightly sessions at The Salford Restoration Office will create a structured environment in which to read and discuss this
pivotal text.

Reading Capital is open to all who wish to attend and participate. Sessions are free of charge, but space is limited so please contact us using the email address here if you would like to participate. Meeting every other Monday from 6 October between 6.30pm and 8.30pm, the sessions will run until 1 December 2008, and begin again on 19 January until summer 2009.

For more information or to contact the organizers visit http://www.thesalfordrestorationoffice.org/

One week for blog award nominations

Hello all: just a friendly little reminder that we have one week left 'til the close of the nominating period for this year's blog awards. Get 'em in!

By the way, anyone know if Sarah Palin thinks dinosaurs were here 4,000 years ago? Me and Matt Damon want to know.

Mutapoem

Manchester-based blogger and poet Matt Dalby writes with news of a very interesting project: a poetry wiki. He says: "It is called 'mutapoem', and was conceived and launched (twice - in 2004 and again in improved form in 2008) in Manchester, from where I also moderate the site.

Mutapoem is a poem without final form or single author, it is a collaborative poem in the form of a wiki, to which anyone can add text, images, links, html, audio or video. More detail is available at the site itself - http://mutapoem.wikispaces.com/mutapoem - especially the page 'what is mutapoem?'

Basically the background is that mutapoem was inspired by one of Nobuo Sekine's 'Phase of Nothingness' sculptures, in which huge pieces of oil clay are placed in galleries for visitors to reshape as they like. They retain their plasticity and continually change. I was impressed by both the absence of any definitive form for the piece, and by the democratic process that enables everyone to contribute to the evolution of a perpetually unfinished work."

Pretty cool, eh? Get on there and start writing!

New blogs: The Britney edition

Clearly, blogging ain't dead. The number of responses to my last most seems to support that age-old blogger maxim about a provocative title generating traffic. Henceforth my titles will all contain the words "Britney." And I'll be experimenting with some other attention-grabbing words too.

A slightly poorly baby (no, nothing serious) prevented me from getting this new blog bulletin out all week, and every day seemed to bring a couple more new ones, so this is a long one. And an extraordinary percentage of this week's additions to the blogroll (4!) come from the same person: artist and writer Diane Becker, who lives up Preston way.

Her blog Dot7Seven explores the minutae of the everyday through short fiction, poetry and other observations.Pressed On is "comments and images relating to the theme 'Pressed On': including things you can press - buttons, switches, videos - or stick on stuff - chewing gum, blu-tac ..."

Ambient Nation is a collaborative visual arts initiative set up in 2003 by Becker and Mark Clements. And Famous Typist features cultural commentary plus art & fiction reviews. Sheesh. Anyone else feel slightly underproductive?

Follow the Yellow Brick Road is the blog of Katherine, who is a Manchester-based writer: "The blog is really supposed to be a place for creative writing, though it seems to have a mind of its own and has turned into a more general ramble about writing, visual arts, red shoes and whatever I'm doing." I sneakily saw that she has a second blog about visual arts books called Unpacking My Library, so I'm adding that too in the interest of encouraging rampant multiblogging.

How come I didn't know about your blog, Max Dunbar? Anyway, here's a link to it. A meaty literary blog that takes in politics and personal musings as well as providing a showcase for Max's writing. Great stuff.

Quit this pampered town is the online home of writer Richard Barrett. Recent posts include a riff on comics, a poem about inventing the wallet, and a completely impressive jigsaw puzzle of the Isle of Wight.

Joe Gravett has a very sharp-looking techy personal blog, or maybe it's a personal tech blog? He says: "I’m something of a geek, and love keeping up to date with what’s going on in the world of technology."

Run Paint Run Run "is intended to be a critical antidote to, and amusing assessment of, all the wonderful and not so wonderful Arts and Culture that is going on in Manchester." It's written by Ella Wredenfors.

Voices From The Below is a personal blog that's also concerned with culture. And it's written by someone with fantastic taste in music. (Jeru the Damaja: so underappreciated on these shores.)

And last but not least, we have Blog by Boz. It's a cat blog. I mean, the cat writes it. Hot damn.

Is blogging dead?

Slow summer? Or has the blogging mania died down? Yes and yes. Blogging, along with every other form of media output, always slows to a trickle during the long, wet days of silly season. But it can't be denied that blogging isn't a craze anymore. Amen to that, I say.

All the cultural mavens chattering excitedly about blogging say, five years ago, have moved on to twitter about Facebooking. That means that the people who started a blog to be trendy and in-the-know have mostly drifted off, leaving their stale urls littering the blogosphere like fallen apples. The many organisations and companies eager to get a piece of the action have figured out exactly how blogging best fits in with what they do (or whether it does at all) and reconfigured things.

The result? I think people who blog now are likely to engage with it in a more substantive way. Blogging as a form of journalism and cultural comment has been subsumed into the mainstream media, while blogging as a way of publishing creative writing online continues to evolve in exciting directions.

So yes, blogging's profile has dropped a bit, but I don't think that's a bad thing. On a local level, I feel like I haven't helped much, y'know, going off and having a baby and all and not blogging much or organising blogmeets (not to overstate my own role in the Manchester scene. Ahem.) But hark! After months of me dropping hints someone has finally seized the blogmeet baton: Julia of Notebooks and MEN Online Editor Sarah Hartleyof The Mancunian Way have between them cooked up a real, live blogmeet. It's set for Wednesday, September 17 at 6pm.

The action is in two parts: first, a tour of the Manchester Evening News newsroom and Q&A with an editor there (limited numbers - go here for info. Second, a more traditional unstructured blogmeet in a nearby pub. Voting on which pub is happening at Sarah's site now. In choosing a pub, I would advise you to consider two important qualities 1.) "dive"-ness and 2.) likelihood to be empty enough to afford the gathering bloggers enough space to comfortably unwind at that thirsty hour. I will try to attend with the littlest blogger in tow, but I probably won't make it. Early evening is our fussy time.

Helpful hints on nominating for the blog awards

How could I forget? Every year, right after I publish the news that we're taking nominations for the blog awards, I have to write a curmudgeonly and pedantic post explaining how a nomination is not the same thing as a vote. And it's that time again. So listen up:

Your blog only has to be nominated once to be in the running to be shortlisted for a blog award. Even if it gets nominated 73 times by devoted readers spanning the globe, the first one is the only one we care about. This ain't the people's choice awards; the judges decide at the MBAs. So putting something on your blog like: "Hey everybody, email this address and nominate XBLOG!" is kinda missing the point.

Also missing the point: nominating your own blog in every category, even the ones that obviously don't apply. Instead, why not maybe throw in a few nominations for MCR blogs you respect and admire in other categories? What? You don't read any other blogs? I'll pretend I didn't hear that.

MLF seeks volunteer bloggers

Calling all literary-minded Manchester bloggers, or wannabe bloggers: The Manchester Literature Festival is looking for one or two people to write for the festival's blog during this year's events in October - and possibly take some snaps too. It'd be a great way to get the most out of the festival (bloggers would get free admission to MLF events - the full programme is now up here) and get some wider exposure for your blogging skillz. Your posts would be read by a large audience on the MLF blog, and linked to your own blog if you have one. If you don't have a blog but have been toying with the idea of starting one, this would provide a quick practice run. Interested parties should email cathy AT manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk

Manchester Blog Awards 2008: Nominations open

It's that time again. Nominations are now open for the 2008 Manchester Blog Awards.

Here are this year's categories:

Best New Blog: You're in the running if your blog got started after August 1, 2007. It's that simple.

Best Writing on a Blog: This category recognizes some of the excellent writing people round here are publishing on their blogs. Your blog doesn't have to be a "writer's blog", though. It could be about anything; it's the quality of the prose we're interested in, not the subject matter.

Best Arts and Culture Blog: A blog that covers some aspect of cultural life or leisure in Manchester. So yes, that means art and music, but also food or sport.

Best Personal Blog: If your blog is like your online journal, this is where you fit in.

Best Neighborhood Blog: This new category has been created in response to the upturn in hyper-local online writing; some may have noticed that the "City and Neighborhood" section of the blogroll has grown considerably this year. You're a contender if you focus your bloggage on a particular locale, which could be a nabe (i.e. Gorton) or a wider area (South Manchester, or even the whole city of Manchester.)

Each winner will receive a cash prize, be the envy of all their geek friends and gain admission into Manchester's special section of blogger Valhalla after death. Mind the rules: To qualify, you have to live, work, or go to school within commuting distance of Manchester. And you can't work for the Manchester Literature Festival or MDDA, our valiant sponsors.

You can nominate your own blog, as well as someone else's. Get your nominations in by 6pm on Thursday, September 18. Email them to mancblogawards AT googlemail.com, clearly stating your name, where you live, the name and url of of the blog(s) you're nominating and which category or categories you're nominating for.

I'll be back to tell you about the shortlist in late September, and let you know who this year's judges will be. The 2008 blog awards shindig is October 22 at Matt and Phred's, look for more details here or here closer to the time. In the next few weeks, I'll also be posting interviews with past winners to give you all some insight into what makes blogs work.

Questions? Email me at themanchizzle AT gmail.com or leave a comment. Have fun!

(MBA logo by Neil Nisbet)

Vacation!

It's kind of like I've been on vacation from blogging, but now I'm actually going on vacation to Vermont, for two weeks. When I return there will be news of a wildly exciting online literature project, frenzied blog awards anticipation and - hey! - more frequent blogging. Honest injun.