Oct 2016

7th Oct 2016

8th Oct 2016

9th Oct 2016

10th Oct 2016

11th Oct 2016

12th Oct 2016

13th Oct 2016

14th Oct 2016

15th Oct 2016

16th Oct 2016

17th Oct 2016

18th Oct 2016

19th Oct 2016

20th Oct 2016

21st Oct 2016

22nd Oct 2016

23rd Oct 2016

MLF Chapter & VerseMLF Chapter & Verse

The Manchester Literature Festival Blog

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • Q&A: Megan Bradbury

    September 1, 2016

    Megan Bradbury‘s novel Everyone Is Watching is something of a hybrid: it employs fiction to tell the stories of famous real people, and the story of New York. The writer’s attention latches on to key figures in the city’s creative history – writer Edmund White, poet Walt Whitman, city planner Robert Moses and photographer Robert […]

  • Review: Irvine Welsh

    April 12, 2016

    So what has one of contemporary literature’s most violent psychopaths been up to lately? Festival blogger Fran Slater headed to The Dancehouse to find out, as Irvine Welsh discussed new novel The Blade Artist (and its protagonist, Trainspotting’s notorious Francis Begbie) with Kevin Sampson. Entering The Dancehouse on this wet Sunday evening was a strange experience. We were here […]

  • Review: Northern Lights Writers’ Conference

    November 24, 2015

    Adrian Slatcher enjoys a day of informative and entertaining talk on the craft of writing at the Northern Lights Writers’ Conference In its third year at the Waterside Arts Centre in Sale, the Northern Lights Writers’ Conference continues to attract a good crowd of writers with different levels of experience and background. With a mix […]

  • Review: Rising Stars Day

    November 17, 2015

    Three literature events in a day?  Our blogger Benjamin Judge takes on the challenge of blogging our Rising Stars Day, but discovers he may have bitten off more than he can chew. Hey, Manchester Literature Festival. Shall we? Shall we count the ways? Yes, let’s. Three events, one day, six writers, one host, one blogger… […]

  • Review: The Letters Page

    November 6, 2015

    Sarah-Clare Conlon hears about a literary journal that’s really pushing the envelope – The Letters Page, edited by novelist and short story writer Jon McGregor I was going to tell you all about the amazing venue that is Elizabeth Gaskell’s House; how me and Fat Roland set up ideas of parties in the posh dining […]

  • Review: Why I Write: A National Conversation event with Joanne Harris

    October 25, 2015

    What do writers owe their readers? LJ Spillane is pleasantly provoked by discussion of a newly commissioned Writer’s Manifesto by Joanne Harris, part of the National Conversation series. In the first half of tonight’s event on 19 October at the Martin Harris Centre, a talk given by Joanne Harris presents a series of questions on the reader/writer […]

  • Review: Iain Pears

    October 22, 2015

    Kate Woodward explores interactive fiction in the company of Arcadia author Iain Pears Manchester was grey and wet, and it was a delight to escape into The International Anthony Burgess Foundation – the welcome was warm, as always. Burgess himself was a man with diverse interests: a novelist, playwright, composer and journalist and it seemed […]

  • 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. […]