Literature Events in Manchester and the North

We can almost feel summer in the air, and summer wouldn’t be summer without a festival or two. To start with, there’s the first-ever Altrincham Word Fest, kicking off with a workshop by Kate Feld of  The Real Story and running for just over a fortnight until Sunday 27 May and a workshop by flash fiction expert David Gaffney (who also crops up in our new guide to Literary Places in Cumbria here). Aiming to get you writing and not just reading, there will be performance, publishing talks and plenty of workshops – from flash fiction and poetry to blogging and scripts. From Thursday 17 to Sunday 20 May, the Not Quite Light Weekend is back, and this year includes literature event In The Half-light: the premiere of some specially commissioned stories from five award-winning women writers, including Burgess Fellow Joanna Walsh, carefully curated by connoisseurs of fine creative non-fiction The Real Story.

The Rainy City is also brought into focus as Neil Campbell launches the second novel in his ‘Manchester Trilogy’, following up Sky Hooks with Zero Hours, musing on McJobs and the changing skyline. Meanwhile, ten years on from going In Search Of the North in Pies & Prejudice, Stuart Maconie went on The Long Road From Jarrow, and will be telling more about how he followed in the footsteps of the famous protestors last year at a special event at Waterside.

Off down the busiest bus route in Europe, Man Met’s Manchester Writing School is having a special International Literature Week, when it hosts the poet Hera Lindsay Bird, over from New Zealand and one of Carol Ann Duffy’s Laureate’s Choices. She’ll also be reading from her new pamphlet Pamper Me To Hell & Back at the fourth outing of the Murmur reading series – another addition to the city’s burgeoning experimental poetry scene (No Matter joins us in June – more on that later this month).

The University of Manchester’s Centre for New Writing’s Jeanette Winterson has been chatting to various guests, including former guitarist of The Slits and star of (for example) Joanna Hogg-directed artsy movie Exhibition Viv Albertine about her latest memoir To Throw Away Unopened, launched as part of Manchester Literature Festival’s special Spring Programme, while tickets are now on sale to see best-selling author Kate Atkinson at MLF when it’s back in full in October.

And don’t forget to scroll down to our More in Literature stories, where we’ve been bringing you news of a debut pamphlet from poet Amy Kinsman which launched at Kraak Gallery in Manchester and the Gardener’s Rest in Sheffield (and check out our brand-new guide to Literary Places in Sheffield here) and WoWFest 18 in Liverpool (ooh, there’s a new guide to Liverpool here). Regularly updated, keep watching this space for all the gen on the likes of Poets & Players at the Whitworth, Bad Language at Gullivers and BL co-host Fat Roland’s new one-man spoken word show at The Lowry, and Zarf at Wharf Chambers over the hills in Leeds.

Here are our picks