By Ben Thompson
Manchester is a city known for its rich literary culture, as evidenced by its recognition as a UNESCO City of Literature in 2018. To celebrate this extensive history, Manchester Metropolitan University is launching the Writing Manchester Map in collaboration with Wordlight, a literary organisation that seeks to celebrate new writing, and have had previous success with their Writing Sheffield Map. This online resource serves to showcase the city’s literary sites through an interactive map that allows users to explore the locations for themselves.
The map will be dotted with colourful location pins, colour-coordinated into five categories – Bookshops, Events, Organisations, Submissions and Venues. The ‘Submissions’ pin also provides an opportunity for users to read poetry written by members of the public. In various locations on the map, poetry has been complied to show how Mancunians have used them for inspiration in their writing.
The Writing Manchester App will be of great use to any inspiring authors. Through the ‘Organisations’ pin, users can discover the publishers operating in Manchester that work to bring new and exciting fictions to the public’s bookshelves, such as Comma Press, Saraband and Cillian Press.
The Writing Manchester Map is to be a great tool of discovery for anybody interested in literature and writing – whether they wish to create their own works, or simply enjoy the works of others.
Through the app, light is also shed on Manchester’s vibrant spoken word and poetry night scene, with events such as Verbose and SPEAK being only two of the most prominent examples. Organisations such as Manchester International Festival, Manchester Literature Festival and The Greater Manchester Fringe are also featured on the map.
Literary figures such as Elizabeth Gaskell and Anthony Burgess also make appearances on the map, which directs the user to centres dedicated to these iconic writers – the Elizabeth Gaskell House and the Anthony Burgess Centre respectively.
The app has been in development since 2017, and is now available to use.
Head on over to the Writing Manchester Map to learn more about the city’s vast and ever-developing literature culture.
In each print issue, aAh! Magazine interrogates one word which runs as a theme throughout our published submissions. This time, we’re changing things up as we introduce aAh! The FRESHERS Issue and launch our Featured Artist brief ‘NEON CITY’. This special mini issue of aAh! will feature a guide to all Manchester has to offer….
Photography: Georgina Hurdsfield Sam Fender headlines Castlefield Bowl for Manchester’s Sounds of the City, straight off the back of performing a peak-time slot on Glastonbury Festival’s famous Pyramid Stage, Fender brings his electrifying set back for Manchester fans.
Autumn isn’t here just yet! You’ve still got time before the hustle and bustle of real life comes at you as August gives us one more month of summertime fun with a sports championship, one of the world’s oldest music festivals and ending with the main event, Manchester Pride. Be sure to make the most of these last days of summer and get out there.
It’s not long now until the hordes of people will be descending on the Lake District’s much-loved festival ground, Lowther Deer Park. After two years of consecutively being cancelled its set to take place from Thursday 28 July to Monday 1 August.
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