Another headline herey*

Last night, the Bad Language crew celebrated a year of spoken word shindigs at The Castle hotel in Manchester's Northern Quarter. The back room was really packed, and it was great to catch up with some lovely people I've met at the night (and at other literature events) over the last year and to meet some new folk too. There was birthday cake and much merriment, and the launch of a new anthology (BL's fourth, if I'm not mistaken) with readings from some of the contributors, including prose types and fellow FlashTag writers Benjamin Judge, Fat Roland and Tom Mason, plus Nija Dalal and Nick Garrard, and poetry types Sian Rathore, Anna Percy and Mercedes Fonseca.


The headline slot was divided into two flash fiction sets: one from National Flash-Fiction Day organiser Calum Kerr; t'other from grandmaster flash himself David Gaffney ...and me! Yep, for one night only, and kept secret til the last minute, I was David's "glamorous assistant". I read four of his new stories while he accompanied me on a Casio keyboard with some specially created tunes, and there was rapturous applause and laughter at our comedy double act, silly dancing and ridiculous amount of swears. And yep, we rolled out the "David and his organ" joke. It would be rude not to, really.

Audioboo here. Lawks.

More write-ups of the soiree, from Nici West and Jo Bell and Guy Garrud.

You can read two of the stories, Eat Less Pastry and Inches From What You Want, on David's website here.

*Another one for the sub-editors amongst you.