Writing Manchester Gothic: Tania Hershman and Rosie Garland at Man Met

The Gothic Manchester Festival is back for a seventh year, running throughout October with various events and activities to whet your ghoulish whistles (more here). We’re excited about this evening, which brings together two acclaimed Manchester-based writers of both poetry and prose and who are both currently working in the Gothic mode. Tania Hershman and Rosie Garland will read from selections of their work, and will be joined in conversation by Dale Townshend, Professor of Gothic Literature from the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University, which organises the annual festival in the run-up to Halloween.

This “audience with” event is unique in that not only are Tania and Rosie friends IRL, they are also two of Manchester’s current Writers-in-Residence: Tania at Southern Cemetery – keep your ears open for a related BBC Radio 4 broadcast coming soon – and Rosie at John Rylands Library – where she will be reading on 17 October (6pm, free) from the manuscript she’s been working on in its cathedral-like confines.

This “audience with” event is unique in that not only are Tania and Rosie friends IRL, they are also two of Manchester’s current Writers-in-Residence: Tania at Southern Cemetery and Rosie at John Rylands Library

Tania Hershman – appearing in the Flash In The Van event at Burnley Literary Festival on 5 October – is the author of three short story collections: The White Road and Other Stories, My Mother Was An Upright Piano and Some Of Us Glow More Than Others, published by Unthank Books in May 2017. Her debut poetry collection, Terms & Conditions, was published this summer by Nine Arches Press and she is also the author of a poetry chapbook, Nothing Here Is Wild, Everything Is Open. Tania curates short story hub ShortStops, which celebrates short story activity across the UK and Ireland, is the co-author of Writing Short Stories: A Writers’ & Artists’ Companion (Bloomsbury, 2014), and has a PhD in creative writing inspired by particle physics.

Equally capable of multi-tasking, Rosie Garland is a novelist, poet and performer – she’s both Rosie Lugosi Vampire Queen and the singer with post-punk band The March Violets. Her debut novel, The Palace of Curiosities, was published by HarperCollins and was nominated for both The Desmond Elliott and Polari First Book Prize and her second, Vixen, was a Green Carnation Prize nominee. Her third novel, The Night Brother, is described by The Times as “a delight: playful and exuberant… with shades of Angela Carter” and she’s currently working on her fourth. She has also published five solo collections of poetry – the most recent, As In Judy, with Flapjack Press in 2017 – and her award-winning short stories, poems and essays have been widely anthologised and appear in Under the Radar, The North, Spelk, Rialto, Mslexia and elsewhere.

Rosie will be popping up again on 24 October, introducing an evening of folk horror with Water Shall Refuse Them author Lucie McKnight Hardy and Starve Acre‘s Andrew Michael Hurley at Blackwell’s. More here.