MLF Chapter & Verse
The Manchester Literature Festival Blog
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Review: Jonathan Safran Foer
October 11, 2019
Centre for New Writing student Joss Areté Kelvin finds small changes can make a significant difference at Jonathan Safran Foer. Acclaimed novelist and non-fiction writer Jonathan Safran Foer is sharing his own vulnerabilities in an effort to get his audience to question our own. His new book, We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Starts […]
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Review: Jeanette Winterson: Frankissstein
October 11, 2019
Centre for New Writing student Georgia Hase finds Jeanette Winterson electrifying. On the evening of Saturday the 5th of October Jeanette Winterson gave a reading unlike any other. Interactive, dramatic, futuristic, her performance was electrifying. Winterson animated the audience with her insightful and humorous observations which are given life in Frankissstein’s pages. Through sound effects […]
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Review: Common People
October 11, 2019
Centre for New Writing student Charlotte Wetton discovers new voices at Common People. I went to the ‘Common People’ event because I crave new stories and new voices. Working-class experience in literature is a rich seam not yet tapped. If I were a publisher, I would be signing up some of these debut writers pronto. […]
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Review: David Nicholls in Conversation
October 11, 2019
Centre for New Writing student Georgia Way finds a tenderness in David Nicholl’s approach to writing. The last time journalist Alex Clark interviewed writer David Nicholls in Manchester, it was, she says, a “mad experience” involving the police and broken microphones. David returned to Manchester on 4th October 2019 as part of his book tour […]
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Review : André Aciman
October 29, 2018
Our Young Digital Reporter Aisha Sodawala learns about setting and sentimentality at André Aciman’s event. André Aciman, author of the critically acclaimed novel turned movie ‘Call Me By Your Name’, writes about desire, absence and longing in amazing prose. He never ceases to amaze me with his intricate descriptions of passions linking to innocence. In […]
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Review: Take 2: Terrance Hayes
October 29, 2018
Centre for New Writing student David Adamson finds Terrance Hayes’ event important and timely. “something happened / In Chicago & Cleveland & Baltimore & happens / Almost everywhere in this country every day” -Probably twilight makes blackness dangerous A few years ago the intended subject of these lines would perhaps have been slightly oblique, but […]
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Review: Take 2: Filigree, Contemporary Black British Poetry
October 29, 2018
Centre for New Writing student David Adamson finds the future of British poetry bright. Tonight, in the surgically bright Performance Space of Manchester’s Central Library, three young poets talked about darkness. This wasn’t, however, the usual darkness that audiences of poetry nights are accustomed to. Instead, Momtaza Mehri, Victoria Adukwei Bulley and Rachel Long explored, […]
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Review: Filigree and Terrance Hayes
October 29, 2018
Centre for New Writing student Thomas Lee finds different types of power in an evening of poetry. Dorothea Smartt steps onstage in the stark white Corinthian hatbox of the Manchester Central Library. The music of Johnny Nash and the O’Jays dies away, leaving only the faint strains of a violinist busking outside in St. Peter’s […]
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Review: Carys Davies and Sarah Moss
October 29, 2018
Centre for New Writing student Matthew McGrogan hears about the breaking of boundaries at our event with Carys Davies and Sarah Moss. The sun emerged from behind the clouds as Katy Shaw welcomed Carys Davies and Sarah Moss to the International Burgess Foundation. Both novelists have recently celebrated the release of a new book — […]
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Review: Rommi Smith & Dave Evans: Bodies of Colour
October 25, 2018
Our Young Digital Reporter Elizabeth Gibson finds Rommi Smith & Dave Evans’ response to the Bodies of Colour exhibition at The Whitworth unsettling and thought-provoking. A year ago, I took part in a performance workshop with Rommi Smith and, looking back, it was a defining moment for me as a spoken-word artist. She taught me […]