True lit

The folks at Manchester Literature Festival have just (well, in the last fortnight or so) revealed the line-up for this year's celebration of all things bookish, and most exciting it is too. Stretching from 8 to 23 October (though there is a special trailblazer event on 30 August, a National Poetry Day shindig on 4 October and an extra interview on 7 October), it's a proper jampacked do this time round.

I'm looking forward to filling my boots with short story action from Adam Marek, David Constantine and Jackie Kay and being entertained with poetry shenanigans from the likes of Jo Bell and Simon Armitage, Carcanet Press and Faber. There's also some grand 21st-century happenings, with a really interesting social media project called The Turing Text being launched by Comma Press and the biggest-ever Blog Awards, now casting its net beyond Manchester and remonikering itself the Blog North Awards (nominate your favourite bogs from the north by 7 September!). As per last year, I'm doing the digital marketing for the festival, so you're more than likely to catch me over on the MLF blog if I'm not posting here.