MLF Chapter & Verse
The Manchester Literature Festival Blog
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Q&A: Megan Hunter
September 29, 2017
Megan Hunter is the author of The End We Start From, a debut novel that tells the story of what befalls a mother and her new baby when London is hit by a cataclysmic environmental disaster. Beautifully written, with a narrative that unfolds as a series of poetic fragments, the book has received rapturous reviews […]
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Review: The Good Immigrant
November 11, 2016
Our blogger Yezuan Calvis gives us one good immigrant’s perspective on an evening with the writers of the celebrated new anthology The Good Immigrant ‘Illegal’, ‘languages’, ‘exile’, ‘unmentionable’. Those are the first words that came to people’s minds when I asked them about the word ‘immigrant’ as a part of my research for this blog […]
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Review: Sarah Howe
November 8, 2016
MLF blogger Amy McCauley attends our event with poet Sarah Howe, where she finds a robust poetics ‘brimming with questions’ alongside ‘a refusal to offer easy answers’. The question of voices and inheritances – cultural, social, historical and familial – travels across Sarah Howe’s work, and her astonishing performance at the Anthony Burgess Foundation confirms […]
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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: 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 […]
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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… […]
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Review: Carcanet New Poetries
October 25, 2015
Sarah-Clare Conlon reports on a busy event showcasing four very different poets, and celebrating the best of new poetry in the UK. The seats fill up quickly for this Carcanet Press-hosted event in Central Library’s modern Performance Space – no mean feat for a lunchtime on what has since proved to be one of Manchester’s last sunny days […]
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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 […]