Manchester Writers at the Portico Library

Manchester writers Abi Hynes and Reshma Ruia have invited along some friends from the literature scene to present a summer’s evening celebrating some of the best of Manchester writing. There will be books to buy and an opportunity to chat to the ten authors, so head to the Portico Library for words and wine.

Abi Hynes is an award-winning drama and fiction writer. She wrote the first four episodes of historical audio drama Dark Harbour for Audible, and recently adapted Anne of Green Gables for audio drama for Audible, starring Catherine O’Hara and Victor Garber, and narrated by Sandra Oh. As a playwright, her work has been staged in theatres across the UK, and her script Long Lost was on the Brit List in 2022, and she is currently developing a number of original dramas for TV. Her short stories have appeared in a wide variety of journals, magazines and anthologies, and she won the Cambridge Short Story Prize in 2020. Her debut short story collection, Monstrous Longing, was published by Dahlia Books in October 2023.

Reshma Ruia is an award-winning fiction writer and poet, and co-founder of The Whole Kahani – a writers’ collective of British South Asian writers. Her work has appeared in anthologies and journals, and she has been commissioned by the BBC, University of Cumbria and Manchester Literature Festival. Her first novel, Something Black in the Lentil Soup, was described in the Sunday Times as ‘a gem of straight-faced comedy’. Her poetry collection A Dinner Party in the Home Counties won the 2019 Word Masala Award and her short story collection, Mrs Pinto Drives to Happiness, was shortlisted for the 2022 Eastern Eye ACTA Awards. Her latest novel, Still Lives, won the 2023 Diverse Book Readers’ Choice Award and is longlisted for the 2023 People’s Book Award.

They’ll be joined by Tania Hershman, “a queer writer of odd things”, including a poetry chapbook and three short story collections, a poetry collection, Still Life With Octopus (Nine Arches Press, 2022) and a debut hybrid novel, Go On (Broken Sleep Books, 2022); writer and publisher of Manchester’s Fly on the Wall Press Isabelle Kenyon; award-winning writer of short fiction Sarah Schofield, whose debut collection Safely Gathered In is published by Comma Press; festival producer and writer Zena Barrie, whose debut comic novel Your Friend Forever was published in 2021; inaugural Writer in Residence for Salford’s Peel Park and author of Cold Fish Soup (Saraband, 2022) and Broken Biscuits (Harper North, 2025) Adam Farrer; Edge Hill Prize-longlisted David Hartley, whose collection Fauna was published by Fly on the Wall in 2021; Stephen Smythe, whose third book, Seven Slightly Dangerous Sins, written with Meg Pokrass, is due out this summer with The Red Ceilings Press, and Jo Howard, a poet and writer of Young Adult fiction, and compère of the second instalment of Unheim-lit at Levy Old Library in June.