Literature Events in Manchester and the North

Things are hotting up again on the UNESCO City of Literature circuit after the traditional summer slowdown and the countdown is well and truly on for Manchester Literature Festival, with the programme now announced for its return 6-21 October (and beyond!). Selling like hot cakes are Kate Atkinson, on 21 October, and An Evening with Tony Walsh at The Dancehouse, on 17 October, so get on it if you haven’t already! A city-wide favourite thanks to his poem This is the Place, Tony, aka Longfella, will read from his first collection, Sex & Love & Rock & Roll, and eagerly awaited new collection Work. Life. Balance. You can also hear his brand-new piece Mightier Than War at the Imperial War Museum North every day at noon and 2pm, part of the Lest We Forget? season, which continues into 2019.

We’ll bring you more on our pick of this year’s MLF events, but for now check out the programme, starting with the likes of Centre for New Writing’s Beth Underdown leading a promenade around the Quarry Bank estate reading specially commissioned Love makes as many ghost stories, and culminating in an evening of Ted Hughes poems read by the likes of Zaffar Kunial and Andrew McMillan. You can also catch Andrew at the Manchester Literature Festival, Penguin Books and Gay Times event Penguin Pride Manchester at Z-arts, when he will be part of an inspiring line-up of LGTBQ+ authors and poets, including one of our favourite short story writers, Kirsty Logan.

Another MLF initiative is the Calder Valley literature trail in association with Northern – download the illustrated map and head for the hills from Victoria Station, where you can see Helen Mort’s specially commissioned poem there & back. Read more about that and our trip to Hebden Bridge with the Northern Poetry Train here.

If you’re more on track with avant garde and experimental poetry, then next stop No Matter, in the former Other Room slot at The Castle with headliners Sarah Bernstein, Carl Gent and Linda Stuart; irregular lazy Sunday evening outing Murmur at Common, this time round featuring Holly Pester, Vala Thorodds and James Davies, plus bi-monthly Peter Barlow’s Cigarette, all back in August, as is Bad Language, featuring headliner Kerry Hadley-Pryce.

September promises a return to form for prose, with a night at the Metropolitan in Didsbury to launch Michael Conley’s new fiction collection, Flare and Falter, on 6 September, featuring support from Sarah-Clare Conlon, Kate Feld, Tania Hershman, Abi Hynes and Steve Smythe. Meanwhile, 14 September sees the launch of a Joy Division-themed anthology – We Were Strangers: Stories Inspired by Unknown Pleasures – edited by Richard V Hirst, and featuring readings by David Gaffney, Zoë Lambert, Nicholas Royle and Sophie Mackintosh – longlisted for this year’s Man Booker Prize for her novel The Water Cure!

There’s also a professional development day for scribes, the Northern Lights Writers’ Conference at Waterside, plus an exhibition dedicated to Banned Books, at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation. And remember to check out our “More in Literature” stories at the bottom of the main guide, and, of course, our must-go Literary Places in Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield and Cumbria.

Here are our picks