MLF Chapter & Verse
The Manchester Literature Festival Blog
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Review: Man on the Moon
October 22, 2015
Young Digital Reporter Poppy Plumb gets into the proper spirit for a kid-friendly theatrical performance in which there were absolutely no aliens whatsoever Bob’s fan club… REPRESENT! Bob is just an ordinary human being, but with an incredibly important job: he is The Man on the Moon. He has to look after tourists, check they haven’t […]
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Review: Ned Beauman
October 22, 2015
Festival Blogger Fran Slater is on hand for a fascinating encounter between writing and art at Manchester Art Gallery, when Ned Beauman meets Matthew Darbyshire With a beard that ZZ Top might have envied, Ned Beauman bounded up to the microphone like a cowboy bouncing up and down atop a bunking bronco. Except he didn’t. […]
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Review: Michael Rosen & Mandy Coe on Children’s Poetry
October 22, 2015
Young Digital Reporter Bryony Makin has fun at a relaxed conversation with two great champions of children ‘doing poetry for themselves, rather than having poetry done to them’. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a literary event with two less pretentious speakers. I have a suspicion that if ‘Children’s’ had been dropped from the […]
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Review: Jami Attenberg & Liza Klaussmann
October 20, 2015
Take two American writers, put them on the stage at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation and let Kate Feld ask them questions. Makes for a pretty good evening, and an excellent start to my MLF experience this year. Jami Attenberg took her wine onstage, misplaced her glasses, and checked that we were all right for […]
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Review: Kirmen Uribe and Jesús Carrasco
October 16, 2015
MLF Young Digital Reporter Elizabeth Gibson enjoys a memorable evening of Spanish literature As a student of Spanish and general lover of languages I was delighted to be assigned two events to blog at the wonderful Instituto Cervantes. Between them they would showcase three of the four main languages spoken in Spain: Kirmen Uribe writes […]
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Review: Kevin Barry and John McAuliffe
October 16, 2015
MLF Young Digital Reporter Kieran Lambe takes in an evening of high-wire poetry and prose in the company of two great writers at The University of Manchester’s Martin Harris Centre. Newly in from the October cold, audience members take their seats in the Cosmo Rodewald Concert Hall. They place coats and scarves over seat backs, […]
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Q&A: Mai Al-Nakib
September 30, 2015
Kuwaiti writer Mai Al-Nakib‘s first book, the short story collection The Hidden Light of Objects is unforgettable. Imbued with a sense of childlike wonder and a vivid immediacy, the stories seek out the places where everyday life intersects with the unconscious and linger there. The book won the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s 2014 First Book […]
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Review: Margaret Atwood at The Royal Exchange
September 30, 2015
Chapter & Verse’s Canadian Literature correspondent Robert Cutforth enjoys a characteristically dry and intellectually stimulating afternoon in the company of the far-seeing author, our Patron Saint of The Future. When the Manchester Literature Festival first announced that Margaret Atwood was coming to town, I knew it would be popular with other reviewers, so I bagsied […]
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Q&A: Laura Dockrill
September 28, 2015
Laura Dockrill is the author of the Darcy Burdock series, as well as Mistakes in the Underground and Ugly Shy Girl. Her new book for Young Adult readers is mermaid coming of-age tale Lorali. She’s a prolific writer, performer and artist whose work takes in a wide variety of artforms and audiences. Michael Rosen said […]
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Q&A: Mary Costello
September 23, 2015
Mary Costello is the author of a slim but powerful book of short stories, The China Factory, and now, a similarly compact novel, Academy Street, about an Irishwoman who emigrates to New York, which The Times called ‘an exceptional first novel.’ Her work has drawn comparisons to John Williams and Faulkner; Anne Enright said ‘her […]