CANCELLED – Frances Leviston and Kirsty Logan at Martin Harris Centre

Sarah-Clare Conlon, Literature Editor

Visit now

Literature Live: Frances Leviston and Kirsty Logan

23 March 2020

Always double check opening hours with the venue before making a special visit.

Author Kirsty Logan.
Book now

Prose meets poetry at the latest Literature Live event presented in partnership with Creative Manchester. The reading series from the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester has been running for going on for 15 years, since October 2005 when it was launched by Louis de Bernieres. Since then the line-up has ranged from Neil Gaiman to Hilary Mantel, back on 19 April, talking to Kamila Shamsie at the RNCM.

So to this evening’s event, and the University’s creative writing lecturer and poet Frances Leviston welcomes fellow Scottish writer Kirsty Logan back to town (she was here last year for the Penguin Pride tour). With work touching on the magical realism genre, Logan is the author of two novels, The Gracekeepers (Harvill Secker, 2015) and The Gloaming (Harvill Secker, 2018), three short story collections, A Portable Shelter, The Rental Heart & Other Fairytales and last year’s Things We Say In The Dark – described as “a shocking collection of dark stories, ranging from chilling contemporary fairytales to disturbing supernatural fiction, by a talented writer who has been compared to Angela Carter”. Stylist said it was a “brilliant collection” and The Skinny called Logan “one of the best contemporary horror writers”, while i summed it up with “Logan’s prose shimmers with menace, and her tightly wrought nightmares feel intensely real”.

Stylist said it was a “brilliant collection” and The Skinny called Logan “one of the best contemporary horror writers”

Kirsty, who lives in Glasgow with her wife and their rescue dog, has also published the flash fiction chapbook The Psychology Of Animals Swallowed Alive: Love Stories, plus a short memoir entitled The Old Asylum In The Woods At The Edge Of The Town Where I Grew Up. She judged the flash fiction entries for last year’s acclaimed Bridport Prize and her own books have won a LAMBDA Literary Award, Polari First Book Prize, Saboteur Award, Scott Prize and the Gavin Wallace Fellowship, and have been selected for the BBC Radio 2 Book Club and the Waterstones Book Club. As well as short fiction, her poetry has been recorded for radio and podcasts, exhibited in galleries and distributed from a vintage Wurlitzer cigarette machine.

She’ll be reading extracts of her work and chatting to Frances Leviston, also originally from Scotland, and who herself has branched out, in her case from poetry to prose. As well as being the author of two collections of poetry – Public Dream, which was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Jerwood-Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, and Disinformation, which was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize – she was shortlisted for the BBC Short Story Award in 2015, and this event coincides with the launch of her first collection of stories, The Voice In My Ear, due out with Cape on 19 March.

Where to go near CANCELLED – Frances Leviston and Kirsty Logan at Martin Harris Centre

Whitworth Park, Manchester
Manchester
Park
Whitworth Park

This 18-acre park opposite the Manchester Royal Infirmary provides a welcome patch of green in an otherwise densely populated and heavily used part of the city.

Manchester
Music venue
Manchester Academy 3

Brilliant venue for catching a touring band on the rise. The boringly titled Academy 3 or more interesting Hop and Grape, as it was once known, is a self contained…

Manchester Academy music venue on Oxford Road Manchester.
Manchester
Music venue
Manchester Academy

The Manchester Academy is a mid size, modern warehouse venue adjacent to the University of Manchester Students’ Union. It lacks any architectural merit and has always been a difficult place…

Cafe at the Museum
Manchester
Café or Coffee Shop
The Cafe
at the Museum

Manchester Museum’s cafe is run by the people behind award-winning cafe Teacup Kitchen. The menu features home-baked cakes, the finest loose leaf teas and breakfast, as well as a wide selection of mains and meals for kids.

Manchester
Shop
Want Not Waste

Want Not Waste is a student-run, not-for-profit zero waste shop operating out of Academy 1 at the University of Manchester Students’ Union.

Universally Manchester Festival 6-9 June 2024
Manchester
The University of Manchester

Celebrating its 200th year in 2024, The University of Manchester is the largest single-site university in the UK, and boasts come incredible cultural institutions, found on campus, across Manchester and…

Manchester
Bar or Pub
Big Hands

Big Hands is the one-time haunt of legendary Manchester band Elbow; it’s shabby, loud and dark, with a jukebox and excellent roof terrace.

Manchester
Bar or Pub
Kro Bar

Kro Bar, Manchester is an independent pub and music venue housed (somewhat ironically) in the former Temperance Society building.

What's on: Literature

LiteratureManchester
Nikita Gill at Feel Good Club

Enter the Underworld with internationally bestselling poet Nikita Gill as she discusses her “propulsive, electrifying and enraging” new book Hekate.

From £18.99
Dan Coxon.
LiteratureLiverpool
Writing The Magic launch at Dead Ink Bookshop

Writing the Magic (Essays on Crafting Fantasy Fiction) is the fourth in Liverpool-based publisher Dead Ink Books’ award-winning series of guides, and this launch event hears from editor Dan Coxon.

From £5.00
LiteratureManchester
Manchester Poets at Chorlton Library

This autumn Manchester Poets returns to its usual home of Chorlton Library, following its exile to Withington while renovations took place at the Carnegie HQ.

Free entry
LiteratureCalder Valley
Arvon’s Story House at Lumb Bank

We just celebrated former Poet Laureate Ted Hughes’s birthday in the town of his birth, now head to his former home Lumb Bank for Arvon’s Story House.

Free entry
Rose Condo
LiteratureKendal
Verbalise at Kendal Brewery Arts

Rose Condo is a multi-award-winning poet and spoken word artist, who carefully blends poetry and prose to create live shows she performs with aplomb.

From £11.00

Culture Guides

Exhibitions in the North

Galleries around the North are gearing up for a new season of exhibitions - from iconic art prizes to smaller, artist-led gems.

Cinema in the North

This month we recommend a season of Film noir, cult Australian movies and a huge celebration of DIY community cinema.

Theatre in Manchester and the North
Theatre in the North

This season’s theatre is gloriously eclectic: from radical cabaret and reinvented classics to new musicals and boundary-pushing performance.

Wisp Press Image
Music in the North

From corrupted shoegaze to experimental electronica, post-hardcore to Indian classical, these are the shows that should be on your radar.