MLF Chapter & Verse
The Manchester Literature Festival Blog
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Q&A: Jean Sprackland
October 4, 2016
Jean Sprackland‘s new sequence of poems, Lock Songs, was inspired by a boating weekend along the Peak Forest Canal, from the countryside into the city of Manchester – and it was commissioned by MLF and the Canal & River Trust. Jean is the author of four acclaimed collections of poetry including Tilt (winner of the […]
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Q&A: Andrew Michael Hurley
October 3, 2016
Andrew Michael Hurley‘s debut novel The Loney won the 2015 Costa First Novel Award and was named Book of the Year at the 2016 British Book Awards. The author has said that his novel set in the Morecambe Bay edgelands was his attempt ‘to write a kind of dark version of the Nativity, exploring ideas […]
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Q&A: Andrew McMillan
September 30, 2016
Andrew McMillan‘s debut collection of poetry, Physical, is a hymn to the male body, male friendship and male love that Michael Symmons Roberts called “a glorious, vivid exploration of the body as the loved and broken ground on which we meet and are transformed.” It won the Guardian First Book Award and the Fenton Aldeburgh […]
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Q&A: Garth Greenwell
September 23, 2016
Garth Greenwell‘s debut novel What Belongs to You has created a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic, and was recently shortlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and longlisted for a National Book Award. A beautifully written book about desire and its consequences, it tracks the complicated relationship between an American teacher […]
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Q&A: Sarah Howe
September 19, 2016
Poet Sarah Howe‘s pamphlet, A Certain Chinese Encyclopaedia, was published in 2009, and she received an Eric Gregory Award in 2010. Her first full-length collection, Loop of Jade, won the 2015 TS Eliot Prize: the first ever debut collection to be awarded one of British poetry’s most prestigious prizes. AS Byatt called it ‘one of […]
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Q&A: Henry Normal
September 15, 2016
You might say Henry Normal is a poet with a very successful sideline in television. As a television writer and producer, he’s responsible for bringing us classics such as The Mrs. Merton Show, The Royle Family and The Mighty Boosh. His seventh collection, Staring Directly at the Eclipse, offers poems about death, human frailty and […]