Truly, Miss Julie?

On Monday, I paid the Royal Exchange my second visit in a month, this time for the Swedish playwright August Strindberg's 1888 classic Miss Julie. When I spotted the poster outside with the quote "I can't run away, I can't stay. I can't live, I can't die. Help me", I almost turned heel and legged it, doing my best woman-on-the-verge-of-a-nervous-breakdown impression as I have been lately. Still, a stiff gin steeled my nerves for the expected emotional onslaught of the "Naturalistic tragedy" (as my copy of the text states) and a straight-through 1 hour 45 minute performance, and in the end I was glad I made it to my seat at stage level, and stayed there.


Miss Julie tells the tale of a count's daughter falling for her father's valet - a proper upstairs-downstairs affair, emphasised here by a staircase built especially for the production from the first gallery to the ground floor. All the "action" (Strindberg loves a good discourse) takes place in the below-stairs kitchen, decked out with an authentic-looking Scandinavian farmhouse table and benches, rustic sideboards and cold store, and various bits and bobs of galvanised paraphernalia. The house is as much a character as the actual people; the one depicted being a replacement to an original manor burnt down by Miss Julie's mother and being the root cause of both women's madness - and the set design itself appears to allude to this bonkerness, including a most complicated bell with which to summon the servants and a strange enormous UFO-style lampshade with changing colours.

This personification of inanimate objects is a bit of a theme in Naturalism, along with the many examples of nature imagery (such as when Miss Julie is described as a hawk, looking down on the others). The other themes are all doom and gloom, and what struck me most was how much the audience was laughing. I'm pretty certain Strindberg isn't supposed to be comedic - this play, after all, is about unrequited love, class war, madness, sex, death, suicide, more madness, misogyny, Christianity, greed, and even more madness. Not to worry, I'm not one to spoil anyone's fun, and I needed a good chuckle myself, although mine may have been down to star-of-the-show Maxine Peake's similarity on occasion to Queenie from Blackadder and perhaps to Joe Armstrong seemingly relishing the swearwords in his lines just a tad too much. Still, their performances were heartfelt and otherwise impeccable, and the rest of the Strindberg-minimal cast were excellent too. Another strong production from the company.

Miss Julie is on until 12 May. See the Royal Exchange website for full details. Image by Jonathan Keenan.

Meet Les Malheureux

Mother pointed out that I haven't blogged in a while. I haven't got round to writing a great deal in a while, either. I'm afraid I've been busy organising stuff for FlashTag's flash fiction competition (open for entries for the next two weeks) and upcoming event, and helping Calum Kerr with the promotion of National Flash-Fiction Day on 16 May. I've also been terrorising the great and the good of the Manchester literary scene - largely the poor poor people at the launch of Rodge Glass' new novel, Bring Me The Head Of Ryan Giggs, when the lovely Emma Jane Unsworth and Joe Stretch also read - although I was on my best (well, better) behaviour for last night's poetry three-hander at Blackwells, featuring Ian Duhig, Michael Symonds Roberts and Salt supremo Chris Hamilton-Emery, and compered by the inimitable Fat Roland.


I've also been busy with Les Malheureux - we're working on some new tunes and accompanying visuals, and we're lining up more gigs than you could shake a road map at (click on the Les Malheureux tab for full details). We're now on the Sounds From The Other City website, we've also signed up for a charity gig stumbling distance from my house (which is handy) and we've been asked by our Monkeys In Love pals to support them at one of their gigs in May. They featured us on their one-off show on Resonance FM recently, which you can listen to here, and we've also published one of our tracks on SoundCloud, with more to follow. The Les Mals official photo shoot was also a success - you can see the results on Facebook, but here are a couple of pics, including one with photographer Zoe Hodson in action. She's on that Flickr thingy, so check her work out there.

Something for the weekend?

You know me, I like a good swear, and a good literary swear is guaranteed to get me on side. Hence my fondness for Larkin, after studying The Whitsun Weddings at school and hearing tell of This Be The Verse. So obviously when I learnt that the quote "Don't let the bastards grind you down" was from Alan Sillitoe's debut novel Saturday Night And Sunday Morning, of course I had to put it on my reading list.

Good book, too. Nice pace; interesting insight into a particular era; great use of dialect, to which I'm also partial. Apparently it evolved from a set of short stories, which is also something to pique my interest, and it's credited as changing the history of the English novel. So when I spotted it on the spring/summer line-up at the Royal Exchange, I was already there. I couldn't wait to see how it would be adapted to the stage, by director Matthew Dunster.


Unfortunately, the opening number rather put me off: an all-singing-all-dancing fight scene with a bloke in a sailor's outfit (in land-locked Nottingham?). Thankfully, it proved to be a one-off and, as the plot took shape, further choreographed sections seemed more natural and did actually add depth to the production. Some innovative set design brought to life the Raleigh cycle factory where protagonist Arthur Seaton (played by Exchange debutant Perry Fitzpatrick) earns the money to keep him in snazzy rigouts, and the same special stage features were employed later on to produce an impressive representation of Goose Fair.

Rapid-fire overlapping dialogue and action moved the story along and gave a realistic impression of Arthur's hectic work-love life balance, then the important hot-bath-and-gin turning point slowed things right down to an almost excruciating pace, soundtracked by the ticking of a clock so languorous as to make the audience feel as drunk and dumbstruck as Brenda (very nicely portrayed by Clare Calbraith) in her desperate predicament.

The props were spot-on, as always with the Royal Exchange, and there were some lovely vintage bikes on show and some great authentic 1950s furniture. There were also some amazing costumes, and quite the display of old-fash conical bras and oversized suspender belts. In fact, there was not an unsubstantial amount of undressing, so, those of a delicate nature, be warned.

In terms of performances, most were spot-on and believable, and it was nice to see David Crellin pop us at Arthur's dad Harold, while Chanel Cresswell and Graeme Hawley made a very convincing Winnie and Jack, respectively. Arthur's accent slippage was a little distracting at times, and Doreen's mum (Jo Hartley) erred slightly too much towards hammy, although she is supposed to be a bit of a comedy character, I suppose, and these were minor issues. Doreen (Tamla Kari) also had a momentary slight slip-up when the standard lamp wouldn't switch off to put the stage in darkness at the end, but hey-ho, these things happen, and all in all it's definitely worth a trip.

Saturday Night And Sunday Morning continues until 7 April. See the Royal Exchange website for full details.

I'm in a band!

If you've been watching closely, you'll have seen me wittering on about a couple of recent performances I've done with my author friend David Gaffney, wherein I read a number of his micro fictions while he accompanied me with some original organ music composed especially for the purpose. Well, after taking off the roof (yup, I'm so Westwood, me) on both occasions, we've decided to run with this thing and aim to carry on gigging, with more whistles and bells (ie an extended set including some of my stories). Our next booking is Sounds From The Other City on Sunday 6 May, which is really rather exciting, and we've even given ourselves a band name for the occasion: Les Malheureux (the poor devils).


Last night, we laid down our tunes and six stories for an upcoming radio slot, and they'll be uploaded to the brand-spanking new Les Malheureux section on this very blog once they've been mixed by sound engineer Steve (communing with Judy the cat in the picture above). In the next couple of weeks, we'll also be doing some interviews, so I'll stick the links to those up as soon as they've been published. All I need now is to come up with an appropriate rider, and I think my rock star credentials will be sorted.

Proof I exist

Some of my recent proofreading work is now in the public domain, which is really rather exciting. Here's a quick round-up; if you need any proofing or editing undertaking, do tell.

Socrates Adams' debut novel hit the shelves this week, complete with a lovely acknowledgement of my fine handiwork (although publisher Tony did admit he may have buggered it up slightly, so if you find any mistakes, they're his not mine). You can pick up a copy - and I recommend you do - at Blackwell's.

David Gaffney's Errata Slips Micro Commissions project for Cornerhouse has culminated in the creation of a feature and also some fab new short stories, which were also given the once-over by yours truly. You can have a shufty at some of them here.

I've a couple of other really awesome fiction jobs in the pipeline, but I'm currently working on non-fiction, a tome about the uncanny in literature, and that's been great too. See, I can turn my hand to all sorts. I'm not just a pretty face (though obviously I'm that too. Heh, it's great having a blog; you can't write any old shite and ain't no one to contradict).

New books on the block

Very excited. This week sees the launch of two awesome novels by two awesome local writers.


Today is the launch party for The Passenger, the debut novel by Peter Wild, another fifth of the Inklings writing group I have the privilege of being a part of. To get in the mood, I'm just listening again to the interview Pete did last night on Michelle Hussey's Desert Island Discs-for-hipsters BBC Radio Manchester show. I suggest you do too; here's a link. The launch is at Soundcontrol at 7.30pm (details here) and features a couple of local bands, plus readings by Pete, another Inkling Valerie O'Riordan, and the inimitable Socrates Adams. You can buy the book here.


Socrates' debut novel, Everything's Fine, is out tomorrow. I can't recommend it highly enough. It's completely bonkers, but good bonkers. Great imagination; lovely style. And the proofreading's fucking amazeballs (I did it). The official launch is on Friday 27 January at Blackwell's on Oxford Road, but before then you can also catch Socrates reading at Bad Language on Wednesday 25 January. He gets around a bit. More details and purchasing opportunities here.

The power of speech

I'm making a concerted effort at the moment to write more stories and read at more places. Last week, I performed (yep, that's the pic) three pieces of flash at Say Something, a fairly new kid on the Manchester lit block and on its third (I think) trip out, this time at The Castle (the first two were at the Lass O'Gowrie). It's run by poet Zach Roddis, who I know from the Bad Language monthly spoken word nights, and it is tipped in favour of poetry - only myself, my FlashMob colleague Fat Roland and Bad Language's Dan Carpenter read prose. Still, it was a good event and well done to Zach for getting a regular slot at The Castle on Oldham Street. Follow him on Twitter (@zach2504) to find out when the next one is happening.


Also now going steady at The Castle is Mark Powell's Tales Of Whatever, a spoken word night with a difference: basically recounting a true story live and without notes (a bit like The Moth on the other side of the pond). Six story-tellers (including open mic, if you get inspired on the night) get around ten minutes each, and all three ToWs so far (September, November and last night) have been entertaining, interesting, informative and even emotional. They're the second Wednesday of every month and the next one is Wednesday 11 January; all the upcoming dates and details, and even some recordings, can be found on the ToW website.

Books n blogs

So the bulk of Manchester Literature Festival is over, bar a couple of "bookend" events (Anthony Horowitz on Thursday; Jeffrey Eugenides on Sunday), and I'm just doing the last bit of mopping up as this year's digital marketing person. It's been really great, experience and fun wise, and I've been kept massively busy running the Twitter and Facebook accounts, writing e-newsletters and articles for the likes of Manchester Lit List and Creative Times, and editing the official Manchester Literature Festival Blog.

This in particular has been fab and has seen me introducing some new features in the run-up to the Festival to whet people's whistles: a redesign; "Writes & Reads" Q&As with some of the writers taking part during festival fortnight; "My Festival" top five picks with authors from in and around Manchester; a series showcasing the various themes running through the festival, and a number of jointly blogged events, which was also a first. I've also been to loads of events and blogged a few myself. Here are some of the reviews and previews I wrote this year:

Patricia Duncker
Manchester Fiction Prize
MLF VIP launch
Theme #4: Literary Tours
Theme #3: Family Fun
Theme #1: Modern European

Lit chick, indeed

Wow, what a hectic couple of weeks it's been in literary Manchester. I've been working on the Manchester Literature Festival doing digital marketing and helping/blogging at various events; visiting the Book Barge in Castlefield; writing and distributing stories as part of my new Site Specific Stories project; pitching for an artist in residency slot with an in situ site-specific short story-writing idea; reading on stage at the Manchester Blog Awards; getting slagged off by someone for being part of the so-called "Manchester literati"; going on loads of literature-based and psychogeographical tours of this great city, and generally running about the place trying to down as many glasses of wine as is humanly possible (drinking wine is a prerequisite of being "literary", right?).

I would say it, but the Manchester Literature Festival has been ace, and it's a shame that it comes to its official close tomorrow (though there are a couple of "bookend" events in early November). Highlights for me have been the European Short Stories event, which was great from a linguist's point of view: stories read by the authors in their native languages (Dutch and Norwegian) while the English translation was shown on screen. Despite having not a word of Norwegian, it was really intriguing to see how you can actually follow it in translation. I also really enjoyed Patricia Duncker's specially commissioned short story in the grand surrounds of the Midland Hotel, plus a nice brew and a scone (note to self: start hanging out here). And PD - what a charming and enthusiastic lady, and such a talented way with words! Other short story joy was had at the glittering Manchester Fiction Prize and the Manchester Blog Awards, and there will be more this week at Bad Language, where I'll be performing a new number, and the Bolton Octagon, where David Gaffney will be reading as part of the Live Literature season, which I'm at next month, likely a quivering wreck.


But I've also been getting a bit of a poetry fix, and today swung by the Whitworth, where the Poetry Takeaway van had pulled up (pictured). "The world's first mobile poetry emporium" was great fun - you divulge some secrets to one of the three poets therein (including someone from the well-renowned Bang Said The Gun) and they spend no more than 10 minutes rustling up a piece based on your witterings then perform it for you and provide you with a copy, wrapped in a kind of takeaway packet. My poem, Multi-task, was scribed for me by none other than exuberant "local" lad Dominic Berry, who I know from Bad Language; I can't believe what a genius creation he came up with - complete with the word "ladyparts", which I just knew I shouldn't have told him about, but which fits in well. It's brilliant and he's going to post it up on his blog soon, so watch his space.

Arts seen

It's one of those points in the year when, just like buses, all the art shows come along at once. Dark Matters just launched at the Whitworth (with pieces - from Bacon to Whiteread - exploring shadows and illusion, so I'll make it down Oxford Road at some point before 15 January), the same day Ford Madox Brown: Pre-Raphaelite Pioneer opened at Manchester Art Gallery until 29 January.

Much anticipated, this is the first major exhibition of the former Manchester-dweller's work, and it's definitely very comprehensive. I was treated to a tour by curator Julian Treuherz, who pointed out all the themes and styles and gave a potted background history of the paintings and painter. I found Brown's perspective somewhat naive and some of the colours rather on the kitsch side, but it wasn't not interesting and I did like the stained glass, the cartoons and the furniture he designed for William Morris. It's £8 or £6 concessions - head down on Tuesday 18 October, and you'll also get some poems about the show courtesy Jean Sprackland who has been specially commissioned by Manchester Literature Festival. See here for more on that.


On Saturday, Cornerhouse flung wide the doors to the first major public solo UK exhibition by one of the most prominent contemporary artists working in South Asia today, Rashid Rana. Everything Is Happening At Once is part of the Asia Triennial Manchester II festival, which is running concurrently across various venues in and around the city until 27 November.

Back to Rana, though, and I thoroughly recommend you catch this free show over all three of Cornerhouse's galleries (it goes beyond the festival to 18 December). Gallery 1 explores comparisons, and I was taken by the study of time versus space illustrated by The World Is Not Enough and Dis-location I, a pixellated image of a street scene made up by the mosaic of tiny snapshots of life in Lahore. Gallery 2 offers up some more controversial themes, from the blood and gore of the Rothko-like series What Lies Between Flesh And Blood to Veil VI, a collage of miniature jazz mag photos worked together to create a full-size piece and make a statement about the role of women in both Western and non-Western cultures. On the top floor, the montage of shop signs, ads and graffiti of Language Series II is almost Impressionistic in colour and abstractness, but the real treat in Gallery 3 is Desperately Seeking Paradise II (pictured). Approaching this huge, almost architectural, structure, you see yourself reflected in its mirrored surfaces, then as you move round the room it dominates, you can see behind the separate tiles and a whole new view becomes available - again from the small-scale images to the bigger picture: in this case a skyline not unlike a pre-9/11 New York, another political message, one presumes.

Smut and stuff

OK, so before I start getting complaints again about not updating the old blog, here you go. I've been working tres hard on the Manchester Literature Festival Blog writing posts and quizzing various writers about various things, so why not pop over and read those here.

I've also been busily squirrelling away at keeping my Wednesday promise of publishing bad words on We Hate Words. You can see that here.

Then, I've been writing another ton of short stories to submit to different zines and anthologies and wotnot and stuff and also to read at a number of upcoming spoken word events, starting with the Bad Shoes Festival this Sunday. I'm in the spotlight in the 2-2.30pm FlashTag Mcr slot in BoCho's Electrik.


And apart from all that (and other secret and not-so-secret projects), I've been frantically organising and promoting the FlashTag Smut Night, which takes place a week tonight - Wednesday 28 September, 8pm, Northern Lawn Tennis Club, Palatine Road, Didsbury. We'll be launching our collection of filthy flash fiction, Quickies: Stories For Adults, and hosting a night of dirty readings featuring our good selves and some of the contributors to the book (a book! A real-life book!).

As I say in the press release: “I’ve been gagging to run a literary-based Smut Night for ages and this seemed like the ideal opportunity – I think an evening of tongue-in-cheek saucy and romantic stories in the curtain-twitching suburbs will go down a treat!” Oo-er missus.

It's a free event and on stage will be, among others, Bristol Prize-winner and Whalley Ranger Valerie O'Riordan; Didsbury author Socrates Adams, whose debut novel Everything's Fine launches at Manchester Literature Festival in October; South Manchester-based Chris Killen, author of The Bird Room, described by The Independent as “exciting and perfectly formed”; Didsbury-based Salt New Voices poet Adrian Slatcher, and Claire Massey, whose work appears in The Best British Short Stories 2011 and Nicholas Royle’s Murmurations, which also launches at DAF (Monday 26 September, 8pm, Pizza Express, Lapwing Lane).

Our headline act is David Gaffney, the “grandmaster of flash fiction” (Bookmunch) and “one of the foremost writers in the short fiction arena” (The Short Review), and author of three critically acclaimed flash fiction collections, Sawn-off Tales, Aromabingo (which he's just lent me) and The Half-life Of Songs, plus the novel Never Never. At Smut Night, he will be reading the story he has written especially for Quickies along with some of his other work. You should so come...

Books the trend

If you haven't heard of For Books’ Sake - subtitle: "books by and for independent women" - then where have you been? Apart from having probably the best title of any website ever, it's an ezine promoting and celebrating writing by women, and today it is one!

In the last year, For Books’ Sake has featured news, reviews and interviews with iconic and upcoming women authors, been involved in World Book Night 2011 alongside author Margaret Atwood, curated the three-day literary programme for Ladyfest Ten, set up their own lending library and interactive forum, collaborated with Pulp Press on an anthology of the best pulp fiction written by women, scheduled for publication later this year, and coordinated regular live literary events and book groups in Manchester and beyond - not just in that London, which deserves some praise in itself! Plans afoot include a monthly literary clubnight in Manchester, so watch this space.

The girls behind FBS are so ace, and deserve plenty of cake for their efforts. I didn't have any time for baking over the bank holiday, so I've provided a testimonial instead. It goes something like this: "I discovered For Books' Sake back in November, so no longer a babe-in-arms but already a healthy, bouncing site. As something of a spoken word fan, I really love to keep up to date with all the events news and reviews - and the FBS shindigs themselves - plus the regular writing competitions and submissions info." There you go. And if you want to read some stuff I've written for the lovely ladies, you can go here, here and here.

Posts win prizes

In case you haven't heard, nominations are now open for the Manchester Blog Awards 2011, and you might even be in with a chance as this time round previous Best New Blog sash-wearer Words & Fixtures isn't allowed to enter. Could this be because: a) last year she got drunk and stormed the stage Cocker-style after not winning anything; b) the organisers fear that if they let her anywhere near a microphone all kinds of filth is likely to spew forth and fill the innocent minds of the great and the good there gathered; c) she works for Manchester Literature Festival, so it might look a bit weird as they're one of the sponsors?*

This is the sixth year of the awards, which celebrate the best online writing in the city, show what an amazing blogging scene there is here and give us the chance to sneak out from behind our computer screens to drink copious amounts of grog and meet fabulous fellow bloggers.


Visit the Manchester Blog Awards website to nominate your favourite Manchester blogs in the following categories: Best Writing, Best Arts and Culture Blog, Best City or Neighbourhood Blog, Best New Blog and Best Personal Blog. Nominations close at 5pm on Sunday 18 September and the winners will be announced at a glittering awards ceremony during Manchester Literature Festival at 7pm on Wednesday 19 October in the fab upstairs room at The Deaf Institute. As well as the presentation of gongs, there will be readings from the winners of The Real Story creative non-fiction competition (closing date for entries is this Saturday!) and Socrates Adams, who'll be treating the audience to extracts from his fantastic forthcoming debut, Everything’s Fine (proofread by yours truly).

*It's c.

Words and festival

Have I mentioned Manchester Literature Festival to you yet? I mean here, on Words & Fixtures, not here on the fabulous new-look Manchester Literature Festival Blog or here on the @McrLitFest Twitter feed. No I haven't. Well, I'm mentioning it right here right now because the line-up has just been announced and it is all very splendid indeed. The two-week shindig kicks off on 10 October and runs until 23 October. I suggest you head on over to the MLF website and have a shufty at all the fabulous things on offer.

Art and literature

Yesterday, the wonderful wizard behind 330 Words (hi Tom!) published a short story I rustled up the other day and which I will be reading at Bad Language on Wednesday (7.30pm, The Castle - be there; I'll also be treating the audience to a couple of my rather more smutty stories. They are each 69 words long. Don't ask me why; it's a totally arbitrary wordcount, obviously).

Anyway, the 330 word story is rather less smutty, although it is about women withholding sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers (I nicked that phraseology off Wikipedia; more on that in a moment). It's sort of a feminist dystopia. I call women "birds", so that's likely to offend some people. The feedback I've had so far, however, has been very positive and one interesting comment I just heard is that it's not dissimilar to the Greek play Lysistrata by Aristophanes.


I had no idea. I was dragged up on The Wirral, mostly, and know nothing of Greek literature, except that it exists and I hear was quite popular. So Bird Strike, which you can read here, was not my poor attempt to plagiarise a far greater work of fiction. Still, I guess Aristophanes is no longer with us, so he's not going to get me on copyright issues in any case.

Wikipedia tells me that Lysistrata "is notable for its exposé of sexual relations in a male-dominated society and for its use of both double entendre and explicit obscenities". Good old Aristo, I like him already. And he had a bloody top beard.


The black and white illustration of Lysistrata is by Aubrey Beardsley, chum of Oscar Wilde, one of the dudes behind the Art Nouveau movement and exponent of those fabulous posters by the likes of Toulouse-Lautrec (Moulin Rouge - La Goulue pictured) and Mucha for which I have such a penchant. His work, I have learnt, is emphasised by the grotesque, the decadent and the erotic. Good oh.

Lit chick

OK, so you know how I'm constantly apologising for not keeping in touch as much as I'd like because I'm up to my eyes in Very Exciting Writing Projects? Well, I've got a new very exciting writing project I'll be working on over the next few months. I've been asked to do the digital marketing for Manchester Literature Festival, which is a total honour and something I really can't wait to get going with. Squee!

As regular readers will know, MLF runs a blog every year, with reviews and interviews to keep folk up to date with all the goings-on over the frantic fortnight. I'm therefore going to be sniffing out bloggers to contribute words of wisdom, and there's no reason why it can't be you. We're holding a volunteers meeting on Wednesday 13 July at 6pm, in the Becker Room of the City Library on Deansgate. Swing by and say hello and get your name in my little black book. I'm going to wear a posh frock and everything, so you'd be a fool not to come. (However, if you really can't make it down, just get in touch with me or email mcrlitfestblog@gmail.com. Simples.)

Mob rule

Remember Flash Mob Literary Salon and Writing Competition? Well, you can now listen again, thanks to Chorlton FM. Check out the Flash Mob website for links to the podcasts and the opportunity to hear my dulcet tones, my temporary inability to say the word "apolocalyptic" and my squirming when trying to introduce our headliner who had nipped to the loo. Still, I managed to not swear, which is A Good Thing.


Next up for the gang behind Flash Mob is the Flash Language Literary Quiz, which we're hosting as part of Not Part Of (the fringe festival to Manchester International Festival) along with our mates Bad Language. Check out their blog post on the subject, complete with links to Skiddle and Facebook and the Not Part Of website and events programme. As well as questions of a literary nature, there will be readings and fun. It promises to be ace, so put Thursday 6 July, 7.30pm, Barcelona in the NQ, in your diary.

Everything, and the girl

Today sees the publication of Emma Jane Unsworth's debut novel, Hungry, The Stars And Everything, through Hidden Gem Press. It's quite timely given last night's lunar eclipse: one of the episodes in the book is about an occultation. I've written a review for Bookmunch, and I'll shortly be interviewing Emma about some of her themes and influences: keep your eye on Bookmunch.


Emma's book launch is tonight at 6.30pm in the fabulous Portico Library (complete with its rather ace "Polite Literature" section). You can also catch her reading as part of this weekend's Book Market, organised by Literature Northwest: the Comma Press website has her in the 4-5pm slot on Saturday. Nice write-up of the event on Manchester Lit List here.

Tripping the lit fantastic

Some of the Flash Mobbers took a road trip yesterday, to Lancaster. Little Dave and Mister Ben have stories in the latest Flax anthology, appropriately enough called Flash Mob (Flax026), and the launch took place at The Storey Institute where Litfest is based. What a great building, and how nice to finally meet Sarah Hymas, editor of Flax. She introduced proceedings then ten of the eleven writers read their 400-word inclusions (which you can see, and hear, online). Next was a break, when we were encouraged to check out Flax028 - a new haiku commission from Maya Chowdhry with a stop-motion film of seeds growing running in an inside-out garden shed. Actually we just chatted to folk and scoffed chocolates. The ten then read pieces of their other work: some, like Norman Hadley's sci-fi Panspermia, were companion pieces to the entries; others weren't even prose at all. Carys Bray's tale had a nice wet theme running throughout, even down to a mention of Noah's Ark, and I really liked Clare Kirwan's bit of smut, Parallel Conservatory.


Dave (lefthand foot) delivered more of his one-sentence stories: Unicorn Logistics, Strategic Magpies, Finger Thief, Perpetual Hen Night Endless Stages, Tyson/dog, Soul For The Devil and The Mould On The Chip... Ben (righthand foot), meanwhile, read a story with no name about a man with a cactus for a hand and a difficult relationship with his father. Dead funny.


Claire Massey, who had butterflies in her first story and moths in her second, Growing Cities, then read the contemporary fairy story A Book Tale (Flax027). This was commissioned for last October's festival along with the amazing Word Dress, custom-made from the pages of books by wedding frock designer Jennifer Pritchard Couchman. Claire refers to "the book dress" and its "crumpling sound" in the story, which nicely reflected Growing Cities with its miniature town of red-bricked houses, derelict mills and boarded-up pubs, as well as another of her pieces Feather Girls (which appears in Salt's The Best British Short Stories 2011) through the "dress of smoke and feathers".

Prose to the occasion

Managed to catch some more bookish goings-on at Chorlton Arts Festival on Monday. The evening was a double act between two Salt authors: Robert Graham, whose latest novel A Man Walks Into A Kitchen has just hit the shelves, and Heather Leach, whose story So Much Time In A Life made the grade for the Nicholas Royle-edited The Best British Short Stories 2011 collection. You can read my review of that tome on Bookmunch here. What's more, I've written a full-blown review of Monday's literary soiree for the fabulous CAF blog; feel free to peruse that at your leisure here.