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MLF Chapter & VerseMLF Chapter & Verse

The Manchester Literature Festival Blog

  • Review: An Evening with Zadie Smith

    December 9, 2016

    Our Young Digital Reporter Laura Cooper reports from a wonderful evening of literature and conversation with Zadie Smith Having already appeared at events in Cambridge and London, Zadie Smith paid a visit to Manchester Central Library on 24th November for a conversation with Katie Popperwell to bookend the 2016 Manchester Literature Festival. She was here to […]

  • Review: An Evening with Alan Cumming

    December 8, 2016

    Our blogger Emily Morris reports back from a highly entertaining evening in the company of actor and writer Alan Cumming     Alan Cumming features regularly in my Saturday evenings, but it’s usually on the screen of my laptop as Eli Gold, a wily, often rude but somehow loveable political campaigner, in CBS series The […]

  • Review: An Evening with Vivienne Westwood

    December 8, 2016

    Blogger Sarah-Clare Conlon reviews our event with author, designer, activist and style icon Vivienne Westwood at this year’s Festival   “I had a duty to exploit my talent,” said Dame Vivienne Westwood at the end of this event promoting Get A Life: The Diaries of Vivienne Westwood, answering a question about how she became a […]

  • Review: Johnny Marr

    November 16, 2016

    What happens when a Mancunian music god comes home to celebrate the launch of his life story? Our blogger Adam Farrer finds out. The Royal Northern College of Music became a church tonight; the audience, a congregation. While this building is no stranger to hosting revered musical figures, Johnny Marr, legendary guitarist and songwriter with The […]

  • Review: The Good Immigrant

    November 11, 2016

    Our blogger Yezuan Calvis gives us one good immigrant’s perspective on an evening with the writers of the celebrated new anthology The Good Immigrant ‘Illegal’, ‘languages’, ‘exile’, ‘unmentionable’. Those are the first words that came to people’s minds when I asked them about the word ‘immigrant’ as a part of my research for this blog […]

  • Young Digital Reporter Review: Susan Calman

    November 8, 2016

    ‘I kind of forgot that anyone would actually read it’: Young Digital Reporter Bryony Makin reports on our recent event with author and comedian Susan Calman. ‘If I become upset,’ Susan Calman warned the audience before her conversation with host Viv Groskop, ‘I’m fine. You don’t need to feel bad’. Which put a finger on […]

  • Review: Jean Sprackland

    November 8, 2016

    Our blogger Rebecca Hurst reports from Hope Mill Theatre, where Jean Sprackland, winner of the Costa Poetry Award, presented a new sequence of poems, Lock Songs, inspired by a boating weekend along the Peak Forest Canal.  On Sunday 23 October I made my way through crowds of Manchester City supporters to Hope Mill Theatre in […]

  • Review: The Real Story with Horatio Clare

    November 7, 2016

    ‘True stories, well told.’ Festival blogger Melissa Brakel headed to International Anthony Burgess Foundation to hear memoirist and travel writer Horatio Clare and the essayists of The Real Story. ‘These stories could just as easily be fiction as non-fiction.’ So says the person in the row behind me. Having the quality of fiction is in […]

  • Review: Writing the North

    November 7, 2016

    Our blogger Desmond Bullen reports from International Anthony Burgess Foundation, where Jenn Ashworth and Andrew Michael Hurley were in conversation about their haunting Northwest novels that follow families in search of a miracle.  Gathered beneath cheerless, leaden skies, in a building – full to overflowing – that thrums with its own ghosts, both industrial and illustrious, […]

  • Young Digital Reporter Review: Comic Art Masterclass with Kev F Sutherland

    November 7, 2016

    ‘Most characters are just a bunch of simple lines and shapes. Don’t be afraid of keeping it simple.’: Young Digital Reporter Abbie Phillips has a go at creating her own superhero at the Festival. On Saturday 21 October, sixteen budding artists assembled at Manchester Central Library for a masterclass in comic book art. The class was taught […]