How to avoid the slush piles

Many of the UK’s leading children’s writers will soon be heading to Manchester for the inaugural Manchester Children’s Book Festival, 1-4 July. As well as lots of fun activities for schools and families, there’s also a couple of events for any budding children’s authors out there…

The Children’s Pitching Competition, 30th June 2010, 1.30pm in the Great Hall of the Friends Meeting House.
This is being held as a satellite programme for the Manchester Children’s Book Festival in collaboration with Commonword and Manchester Central Library. There will be up to sixfinalists, battling it out to pitch their novels to a panel comprised of Julia Churchill, literary agent from Greenhouse Literary Agency, Emma Young, Children’s Editor from Macmillan and Sherry Ashworth, award winning children’s writer and Senior Lecturer on MMU’s Creative Writing MA. Free entry but contact marnie@cultureword.org.uk to register interest in coming.

Symposium 1, July 1st 2010, 11am-12.30pm at MMU, Geoffrey Manton Building The Children’s Trilogy: recession, technology and the killer slush pile. A panel of industry experts will each talk about the state of the children’s fiction industry today. Speakers are Clare Conville, literary agent for Conville & Walsh, Barry Cunningham, M.D. of Chicken House Publishing, Melvin Burgess, author of Junk and Billy Elliot, Sophia Bennett, author of Threads, and Robert Williams, new author on the block with experience in book retail and winner of a Faber & Faber first chapter competition. £5 or £3 concessions. Visit festival website http://www.manchesterchildrensbookfestival.co.uk/ for information on booking.

You've got to be in to win!

You may have your eyes on a big gold cup this month, but if you’re a Manchester writer there maybe a greater prize within your reach...

Rain Never Stops Play

Creative Tourist and Rainy City Stories have just launched a new short story competition. They are looking for stories that encapsulate some of the romance or the horror, the daily drudgery or the surreal moments, the beauty or the decay of modern urban life. Stories should be contemporary or set within the last ten years, and should provide a detailed snapshot of city life. The competition is open to anyone, from any city. Judges (including the public) will be selecting one Manchester winner and one winner from elsewhere. The winning stories will be published on Creative Tourist and Rainy City Stories, and the winners will receive a cash prize of £100 and tickets to some very special events at this year's Manchester Literature Festival. The closing date for entries is July 2nd. For full details of how to enter, please visit www.creativetourist.com/competitions.

Crocus First Chapter & Pitching Competition 2010
The search is on to find the best budding novelist in the North of England. The winner will get £250 and their own writing mentor to help them get their novel completed. Six other promising novelists identified through the competition will be provided with significant assistance with their novel and be invited to take part in Is There A Novelist In The House? on Saturday 23rd October as part of the Manchester Literature Festival. This competition is open to writers who live or work in the North of England and the closing date is 30 June 2010. Full details and an entry form available at www.cultureword.org.uk.

Manchester Poetry Prize

The Manchester Writing School at MMU have launched the second Manchester Poetry Prize. This year's judges are Simon Armitage, Lavinia Greenlaw and Daljit Nagra. The Manchester Poetry Prize is open internationally and will award a cash prize of £10,000 to the writer of the best portfolio of poetry submitted. A bursary for study at MMU will also be awarded to an entrant aged 18-25 as part of the Manchester Young Writer of the Year Award. The prizes will be presented at a special Awards Dinner as part of this year's Manchester Literature Festival. The deadline for entries is 6th August 2010 and the entry fee is £15. Full details on how to submit your work can be found on the MMU website.

Bugged - Creative Eavesdropping

On July 1st 2010, Jo Bell, poet and director of National Poetry Day, and David Calcutt, novelist and playwright, are inviting writers from across the country to take part in a new and exciting literary venture. The idea is simple. A writer places themselves in a location where they can overhear other people’s conversations. And it can be anywhere – on a bus or train, in a supermarket, pub or coffee shop – wherever people gather and talk. Then the writer simply jots down fragments of overheard conversations, and uses those fragments as a starting point for a piece of writing – prose, poetry or drama. Guidelines to the length of the work are: 1000 words for prose, 60 lines for a poem, 150 words for flash fiction, and 5 minutes for short scripts. The deadline for submissions is 15th August.

Jo and David will then select the best of the submitted work, and post extracts or whole pieces on a purpose-built blog, and publish them in a print-on demand anthology. The anthology will be launched at the Manchester Literature Festival in October, with featured writers reading and performing their work. Although a handful of writers have been commissioned to take part, such as Jenn Ashworth, David Gaffney, Steph Dale, the aim of the project is to encourage as many writers from across the UK to take part, and to create a real sense of community among writers of all kinds and experience, and to especially give emerging writers the opportunity of appearing in print alongside those who are more established. Above all, it is to create an anthology of fresh, vibrant, and original writing of a high standard, through which really do hear the nation speak.

To find out more about how to get Bugging visit: bugged.org.uk

Great Sermons of the Past

Manchester Cathedral is launching a series of events aiming to reaffirm the rich potential of the sermon as a popular literary art form. Not only is contemporary secular culture heavily prejudiced against it (the Chambers Dictionary, for instance, defines 'to preach' as 'to deliver a sermon; to discourse earnestly; to give advice in a sententious, tedious, obtrusive or offensive manner') but it's an art form all too often seemingly unloved, even by its own practitioners.

Each event will feature public readings, and discussion, of classic sermon texts by such old masters of English prose as John Donne, Hugh Latimer and Lancelot Andrewes. The first event takes place on Thursday 6th May immediately after 17.30 Evensong in the Cathedral (i.e. about 18.15). Michael Schmidt will introduce the sermon and Matthew Frost will deliver Hugh Latimer’s great Sermon of the Plough - an opportune sixteenth-century statement for election day!

Other Great Sermons of the Past will take place on 27 May, 3 June and 10 June.

Manchester Literature Festival and Manchester Cathedral have also joined forces to commission a Great Sermon for the Future, to be delivered as part of the festival in October – watch this space for more information…

Rainy City Workshops

In May and June 2010 Rainy City Stories are running some more of their popular ‘writing about place’ creative writing workshops across Greater Manchester. These two-hour sessions will explore how the best writers successfully evoke the unique feeling of a place, and how descriptions and telling details can be used to transport the reader to a particular setting. The workshops will be led by some of Manchester's finest writers: Jenn Ashworth, Suzanne Batty, Shamshad Khan & Nicholas Royle.

The workshops are suitable for all levels of writer. Places are free, but limited to 15 people per session, so early booking is advised. Full details can be found at www.rainycitystories.com/news - so sign up for one now and find out how you can add a story to Manchester's best read map.

This series of workshops is being supported by the Association for Greater Manchester Authorities.

Odes on Lancashire Vases - a poetry commission opportunity

Following previous successful collaborations, Manchester Literature Festival and Manchester Art Gallery are again teaming up to inspire the city's writers. We are looking to commission a poet to produce creative responses to the forthcoming Pilkington’s Lancastrian Pottery: Art and Industry in Greater Manchester exhibition.

The exhibition will highlight Manchester’s role as a national centre of ceramic innovation and design in the early 20th century, showcasing 150 of the most significant pieces of Pilkington’s pottery and tiles from 1890-1930. The show will explore both the social and art history of the factory’s story. The image above shows a vase decorated by Gordon M. Forsyth for Pilkington's Tile and Pottery Company in 1908. Forsyth was chief artist at the factory. His main influences were Persian, Spanish and Grecian designs. Copyright permission to use the image has kindly been provided by Manchester City Galleries.

The poet will be expected to produce a minimum of six new poems to be performed as part of a special lunch time event to be in held in the Gallery as part of the Manchester Literature Festival in October 2010. The commissioned poems will also be displayed in the Gallery for the duration of the Festival and published online.

The commissioned poet will also be expected to help inspire members of the public by facilitating a two day workshop held at the Gallery on the weekend of 16th/17th October. As part of the workshop, the poet will encourage participants to produce their own creative responses to the exhibitions via a series of practical exercises aimed to stimulate ideas and develop craft.

The poet will be paid a total commission of £1200, including performance and workshop facilitation fees.

To apply for this commission opportunity you must live or work in Greater Manchester. All applicants are required to submit:

* a covering letter including your contact details and a brief explanation of why you would like to take up this commission
* a one page CV outlining your writing history and previous teaching/workshop facilitation experience
* one original poem that you have written in response to a work of art (not necessarily one exhibited at Manchester Art Gallery)

The deadline for receipt of applications is 5pm on Friday 19th March and they should be submitted by email to Jon Atkin at admin@manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk or by post to Manchester Literature Festival, Beehive Mill, Jersey Street, Manchester M4 6JG. Shortlisted applicants may be invited to an informal interview on Tuesday 6th April.

More information about the Manchester Art Gallery can be found at http://www.manchestergalleries.org/

More information about the Manchester Literature Festival can be found at http://www.manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk/

Movie of MLF Selected Highlights

Get out the coke and popcorn and enjoy the highlights of last year's festival in the first ever MLF movie featuring the likes of Joan Bakewell, Ruth Padel, Eoin Colfer, Michael Schmidt, Simon Armitage, Claire Harman, Frederic Raphael, Sinead Morrissey & Michelle Magorian, as well as our Rainy City Stories Walking in the Rain tour.