With summer fast approaching, there is a wide range of festivals and literary events to look forward to. Many of the events featured on our list this month are hosted by the Centre for Place Writing at Manchester Met, but there are plenty more highlights to choose from too.
Hosted by the Centre for Place Writing at Manchester Met, Award winning nature writer Julian Hoffman will speak from his home in northern Greece with the Centre for Place Writing’s own nature writer, Paul Evans. Evans is also the Guardian’s Country Diarist, a poet and a broadcaster.
Together they discuss recent projects as well as the role of writers, bearing witness, advocating for the voiceless, writing as resistance and the most urgent topic of our time – the climate emergency.
Hosted by the Centre for Place Writing at Manchester Met, this online talk will focus on Hall Steinunn Stefánsdóttir’s current project ‘Spherical White With Diamond’, a site specific outdoor sound installation at Formby Point. The installation incorporates part of the text of Jean Spackland’s book Strands: A Year of Discoveries on the Beach.
Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir has made site-specific sound work in many locations, from a remote valley trail to cement works in Reykjavík. Join the talk to learn more about her current and upcoming work.
Celebrating three new voices in the writing community in Manchesters, this event is part of the Manchester Festival of Libraries, hosted by Manchester Libraries, Read Regional and Manchester City of Literature. Writers’ work ranges from secret societies for women who throw wild Bacchanalian-inspired feasts, to a contemporary spy novel set in Kazakhstan and a collection of poems that explore the lives of variety performers including Hylda Baker, Frankie Howerd, Willy Netta’s Singing Jockeys and The Bryn Pugh Sponge Dancers.
Hosted by the Centre for Place Writing at Manchester Met, in this online conversation streamed directly from her studio, Annalee will discuss some of the many collaborative and multidisciplinary projects, which have been informed by the place where she lives and works. This includes her long-term collaboration with American archaeologist Dr. Matthew Reilly (Brown University), ‘Unearthing Voices,’ which links archaeology, heritage studies, and contemporary art to explore the material heritage of Barbados. She will also discuss her own art practice, which includes performance-based works such as Sweeping the Fields, an act of ‘remembering and of cleansing.’
Three of the most exciting writers of place today: Natasha Carthew from Cornwall, Sukhdev Sandhu who is based in New York, and Anita Sethi from Manchester, will come together an in conversation event, forming the final public event of the series, the Centre for Place Writing. Each author will read from their work before opening discussion on the genre of place writing, issues of race and racism, working-class voices, gender and nature writing.
Carcanet Press offers this launch of Thinking with Trees, the debut collection by Jason Allen-Paisant. Hosting the reading will be poet Malika Booker, joining Jason to discuss the new book. Allen-Paisant will read from his collection, and, along with Booker, will discuss his debut novel and answer audience questions.
Supported by Arts Council England, this programme of events will take place in internationally renowned institutions from Manchester’s heritage libraries. Programme topics range from conversations on well-being, culture, creativity, digital and information services and workshops, and of course, author and reading events.
Offered by The Reader, this ongoing, outdoor event will be hosted by Sophie Clarke, and will take place at the Secret Garden at the Mansion House. It will encompass a large variety of writing and performance styles. Join the event to hear poets and prose authors read and perform their work outloud.
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Featured image and gallery: Leo Woollison Crook Angela Cheveau and Kate Carne were crowned winners of the 2024 QuietManDave Prize on Friday. The short-form writing prize is held biennially to honour the memory of the much-loved and well-known Manchester writer and critic Dave Murray, who passed away in 2019. The writers were each awarded £1000…
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