MLF Chapter & Verse
The Manchester Literature Festival Blog
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Q&A: Sungju Lee
October 11, 2016
Sungju Lee‘s memoir, Every Falling Star, introduces young adult readers to his native North Korea, a place where personal freedom and self-expression are sharply limited. Before his event at this year’s Festival, we spoke with the author about how his life experiences became an encouraging story for young people around the world. How did you […]
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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: 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: Mai Al-Nakib
September 30, 2015
Kuwaiti writer Mai Al-Nakib‘s first book, the short story collection The Hidden Light of Objects is unforgettable. Imbued with a sense of childlike wonder and a vivid immediacy, the stories seek out the places where everyday life intersects with the unconscious and linger there. The book won the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s 2014 First Book […]
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Q&A: Mary Costello
September 23, 2015
Mary Costello is the author of a slim but powerful book of short stories, The China Factory, and now, a similarly compact novel, Academy Street, about an Irishwoman who emigrates to New York, which The Times called ‘an exceptional first novel.’ Her work has drawn comparisons to John Williams and Faulkner; Anne Enright said ‘her […]
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Q&A: Stuart Evers
September 23, 2015
Stuart Evers‘ first short story collection, Ten Stories About Smoking, won the London Book Award and was praised in The Irish Times as ‘touching, true and shocking. Here is a book that not only makes more sense of life, it delights the mind’. His novel, If This is Home, was published in 2012 to great […]