Chorlton Book Festival stirs the suburbs

Manchester Literature Festival is apparently not the only book festival in town – our festival blogger Clare Conlon picks her highlights at this month's Chorlton Book Festival...

Less than a week after Guo Yue and Clare Farrow wrapped up the Manchester Literature Festival with their magical Children’s Bookshow bookend, the city isn’t ready to close its dustcovers just yet. Even The Guardian has picked up on the bookish buzz of the place with an article about Manchester’s Literary Renaissance by Manchester University lecturer and MLF trustee Jerome de Groot, which the city’s literati and Twitterati have been proudly disseminating (see The Manchizzle and The Art of Fiction blogs for starters). In it, Manchester is described as ‘one of Europe’s most creative and dynamic cities’, so it’s no surprise that even the sleepy suburbs are a hotbed of talent.



Yesterday, down in the south of the city, the fifth annual Chorlton Book Festival got off to a flying start with the local launch of Too Many Magpies, the new novel by Didsbury-based author Elizabeth Baines. When she’s not a prizewinning prose fiction and script writer, Baines likes to tread the boards, so she had her 20-strong audience hooked as she treated them to two excerpts from the haunting story set in an imperfect future heavily influenced by the local area. An acclaimed short story writer, she also read from one of her more light-hearted pieces – the tale of a writer getting a script mentored, it was well received by those gathered (many of whom were writers themselves) in the relaxing environs of Chorlton’s Lounge bar.

Baines’s fellow Salt author Robert Graham will be appearing at the Festival later in the week, reading from his latest collection of short stories, The Only Living Boy, in the cosy Lloyds Hotel. Heartwarming and quirky, Graham’s work draws inspiration from the people and places of Manchester, and one of the anthology’s stories, Fruit Or Vegetable, revisits the principal characters of his novel Holy Joe, which is largely set in Chorlton, where he lives. Graham also teaches at MMU Cheshire and is the author of a number of creative writing guides, including How To Write Fiction (And Think About It), and his workshops and readings are always well attended.

Not surprisingly, the lovely old Chorlton Library building is playing a big part in the festival, hosting a number of events over the 13 days (click here for the full programme). It will provide the backdrop next Tuesday as Manchester-based crime writer Bill Rogers reads from his thriller The Cleansing, which follows a killer clown who is haunting the city’s streets. Rogers may also have a few real-life local horror stories to reveal – having worked as a schools inspector in the Chorlton area, who knows what tales he has to tell!

As well as novelists, short story writers, poets, playwrights, historians and non-fiction authors, Chorlton Book Festival will this year include bloggers, so even the most modern forms of writing are explored. Didsbury-based writer and blogger Adrian Slatcher works for the Manchester Digital Development Agency, advising arts organisations on how best to use social media to improve their online presence. As part of the festival, he will be presenting a workshop on social media for writers, showing how the web can be exploited for writing, marketing and publishing purposes.

Also bringing the festival bang up to date is a poetry slam, compered by street poet and MLF's own Call Busker Mike Garry, whose latest work includes Mancunian Meander and features the unforgettable verse: Gorton girls / Know all the words / To songs by Chaka Khan. The best performance will win £50 and the contest (one of a number of events aimed at young people) is open to anyone aged 13 to 19.

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Clare Conlon is a freelance writer, editor and press officer. Her blog, Words & Fixtures, won Best New Blog in the 2009 Manchester Blog Awards.

A Pinch Of Salt: Northern Salt (Whitworth Art Gallery, October 18)

The Whitworth Art Gallery is a near perfect location for a reading. Through the windows the park breathes, behind us the art awaits. The fragrance of new tastes drifts towards us from the cafe. Autumn, in the form of flat orange leaves, falls slowly from the trees outside. The hand-driers in the bathrooms whisper sweet nothings to our hands. (Actually, if anyone from Whitworth is reading this, you might want to look into that - they seem to be on half-blow or something.)

Where was I? Oh yes...

Location. The backdrop of the park is so perfect because the glimpses of people’s lives as they meander through the trees complements the snapshots of life we get from the writers visiting Manchester today: Robert Graham, Elizabeth Baines, John Siddique and Mark Illis. I must admit that all four names were unfamiliar when I decided to come along to the event. Although, of course, it is a great pleasure to listen to a favourite writer read from their work, one of the best things about having a literature festival on your doorstep is the opportunity to find new writers. New favourites. And with so many of the events being free, it is an unusual reader who isn't tempted to explore. This is doubly true when you consider that much of this new talent will not be published by companies that can afford huge advertising campaigns. Salt is a case in point. Literature is like everything else; you can make a little effort and find real treasures, or you can go to the supermarket and buy what everyone else is buying.

If you do go to the supermarket you will miss Robert Graham's short story collection, The Only Living Boy, with its witty tales of life in Manchester and Northern Ireland. You will not find Elizabeth Baines’ novel, Too Many Magpies, a tale of an unnamed woman's encounter with a mysterious stranger that reflects the author's belief that we are living in a newly precarious world. You will have to live without John Siddique's heartfelt and powerful poetry, the latest collection of which, Recital, is a combination of lunar almanac, love poetry and an investigation of modern Britain.

Most of all, though, you will miss out on Mark Illis' new work, Tender. This is a novel as a series of short stories. Mark admits during the question and answer section at this event that his writing may be subconsciously influenced by his work in television. He says, perhaps, you could view his new book as working in a similar way to a television series in which the episodes form a coherent narrative arc but at the same time work individually, too. Certainly, the story he read - There's A Hole In Everything - didn't seem at all lost when separated from the collection. It was writing of the very highest order and those of you who were there will know why I am picking my words very deliberately when I say I 'beseech' you to buy a copy.

Of course, going to the supermarket isn't the only way you can miss out on these writers. By the time Jo and I got to the front of the queue at the book stall, we were greeted by an empty table. I will be making a visit to www.saltpublishing.com - may I suggest you do the same? And don't forget too that there is still a week of the festival left – that’s a whole week's worth of new writers to find.


Benjamin Judge collects his thoughts on his blog Cynical Ben, which has been shortlisted at this year's Manchester Blog Awards. He also writes very short fiction at Carp Glob.