Queer Contact: Outspoken at Central Library

Queer Contact – Outspoken at Manchester Central Library, Manchester, 15 February 2017, from £6.00 - Book now

Outspoken takes place only during Contact Theatre’s annual Queer Contact Festival, this year called QC17, so make sure you grab the chance to catch this line-up of LGBTQ poets, drawing the North together with the South for a special showcase of queer spoken word, poetry and literature. Contact decamps to Central Library for this one-off event, hosted by Young Enigma’s Adam ‘Beyoncé’ Lowe, an award-winning writer, publisher and creative producer, and the LGBT History Month Poet Laureate. He will be introducing Dean Atta, Maya Chowdhury, Gerry Potter and Paula Varjack.

Having been shortlisted for the Polari First Book Prize with his debut, I Am Nobody’s Nigger, Dean Atta is working on his second poetry collection, The Black Flamingo, and has been described by the Huffington Post as “one of the leading lights in London’s poetry scene”. A regular performer at events such as Manchester Literature Festival, Maya Chowdhury’s most recent collection, Fossil, came out last year on Peepal Tree Press and she has had work published in Bloodaxe’s Out of Bounds anthology and in magazines such as Ambit. No slouch himself, Gerry Potter’s Scouse patter can often be heard on the local poetry scene, and he has a number of tomes of “pomes” (as he calls them) to his name, published by North West independent Flapjack Press. You may have caught London-based writer, filmmaker and theatre maker Paula Varjack before too – she was at 3MT just before Christmas and has performed at the infamous Literary Death Match. Her debut prose and poetry publication Letters I Never Sent to You came out on Burning Eye Books last year.

As well as performing during the evening, Dean will be running a creative writing workshop in the afternoon. Places are limited, and free with a show ticket, so get on it quick (call 0161 274 0600 to book for both)!