MLF Chapter & Verse
The Manchester Literature Festival Blog
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Review: True Harmony: Yeats at 150
October 22, 2015
Festival Blogger Abi Hynes is stirred by a lively musical and poetic seance raising the spirit of William Butler Yeats I was by no means an expert in WB Yeats when I joined MLF in a packed-out hall at the Whitworth Art Gallery last Thursday, to summon the poet’s ghost. The event was conceived of […]
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Review: Care Santos
October 22, 2015
Young Digital Reporter Elizabeth Gibson devours a delicious event with Spanish author Care Santos at Instituto Cervantes. There is something about chocolate. Its perfume, its allure… So strong is its charisma that it has enchanted many writers to weave it into their stories, such as Mexican classic Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel and Joanne Harris’s […]
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Review: Adam Marek and Diao Dou
October 22, 2015
Young Digital Reporter Calla Randall learns that surrealism is a game with rules to follow – and occasionally break – at a jolly afternoon with writers Adam Marek and Diao Dou AIDS and the Black Death still exist. There are treatments for both, but no cure yet for AIDS. In one of my favourite Adam Marek stories set at […]
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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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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 […]