MLF Chapter & Verse
The Manchester Literature Festival Blog
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Review: Jeanette Winterson at The Royal Exchange
October 15, 2015
Festival blogger L.J. Spillane finds magic and mystery in an evening at the theatre with Jeanette Winterson, discussing her recent remix of A Winter’s Tale. Enter author, pursued by a bear… I’m sitting at the edge of the set for The Royal Exchange’s production of The Crucible; it’s a large ceramic bowl. Water fills it at […]
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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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Review: Anthony Horowitz at Central Library
September 14, 2015
Festival Blogger David Hartley sees the much-loved author of books for children, young people and adults launch his new James Bond novel in one of this year’s Preview events. Fresh from a mild media tussle, a cheerful and engaging Anthony Horowitz took to the performance space in Manchester Central Library to talk all things 007. […]
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Review: Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style
September 9, 2015
Festival blogger Jonti Dalal-Small enjoys a candid and illuminating evening with author and Harvard Psychology Professor Steven Pinker, the first of our Preview events for 2015 The last time I saw cognitive theorist Steven Pinker speak, he was in conversation with Rebecca Goldstein, a philosophical novelist. She is also his wife. They formed quite a double-act, […]
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Review: Jenny Offill
March 27, 2015
Festival Blogger Benjamin Judge will never be best mates with Dept. of Speculation author Jenny Offill. But he’s okay with that. And he enjoyed the Folio-shortlisted author’s recent event at the Anthony Burgess Foundation… I had a plan for the evening: Go see Jenny Offill. Shout “OMG I’M YOUR BIGGEST FAN” at the most […]
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Review: Jon Ronson
March 13, 2015
Festival blogger Kate Ashley enjoys an evening with Jon Ronson and John Robb that covers everything from Twitter witch hunts to the writer’s early career in Manchester. Jon Ronson never wanted to be a writer when he was growing up; a life spent sitting alone in a room seemed depressing and dull. But now that […]
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Review: David Mitchell
November 18, 2014
Festival Blogger Robert Cutforth takes an unconventional approach to reviewing the David Mitchell event at RNCM: an imagined letter from the author to reviewer – fitting, as Mitchell advised aspiring writers to write letters to themselves from their characters to learn about them. (This letter is not actually from David Mitchell, just to be perfectly […]
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Review: Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems, Central Library
November 18, 2014
Young Digital Reporter Rebecca Roe visits an unusual poetry event at Central Library as part of the Chaos to Order programme… The first thing that I noticed when I entered Manchester’s Central Library café is the noise. In one room of the building the band Everything Everything was playing from behind a glass wall, replacing […]
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Review: John Lahr on Tennessee Williams; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
November 10, 2014
Festival blogger Charlotte Rowland enjoys an evening of two halves: a talk with John Lahr about American playwright Tennessee Williams and then a performance of one of his most celebrated plays at the Royal Exchange Theatre. If there is one word that the dramas of playwright Tennessee Williams do not spell out, it is victory. […]
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Review: Northern Lights Writers Conference with Will Self
October 27, 2014
Robert Cutforth reports back from the Northern Lights Writers Conference at Sale Waterside, where he has an unsettling encounter with Will Self … The Northern Lights Writers Conference starts pleasantly enough with writers Joanna Kavenna and Jo Bell discussing the difficulties in extracting money from people who ask us to write something for them. It’s […]