The Return of Mark Gwynne Jones & the Psychicbread

Mark Gwynne Jones and the Psychicbread return to Studio Salford, King's Arms Salford on Sat 11th July.

Inspired… one of the most accomplished performance poets in the land… drawing the audience into a world where things are not quite what they seem. – The Guardian

Following their sell out show in January Mark Gwynne Jones and the Psychicbread return to Salford on Sat 11th July. From the girl who spent too long on a sunbed to the joys of driving a Sherman Tank at rush hour. . . this show uses humour, music and poetry as its messenger.

Mark formed Psychicbread in Manchester with film-maker Andy Lawrence. Since then the show has grown and Mark has teamed up with kora player Nick the Hat, pianist Deb Rose and percussionist John Thorne bringing together poetry, film and music into one live performance.

Mark Gwynne Jones and the Psychicbread are performing at Studio Salford, The King’s Arms, 11 Bloom Street, Salford, M3 6AN – on Sat 11th July, Doors 8pm Show 8.30pm - Admission £7 To reserve tickets call 0795 0000 761 / email busyplanet@mail.city.com

For free audio and films visit www.psychicbread.org
To read Mark’s recent interview with The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/urbanundiscovered/mark-gwynne-jones

Poetica and Knitting

A lovely way to spend an evening: knitting and listening to poetry. However, if knitting isn’t your thing, you’re still very welcome. Poets include Oyeyinka Akintayo, Antonionioni, Tricia Ashworth, Irene Clare Garner, Peter Hartey, Alex Humphrey, David Keyworth, Paul Knight, Andy N, Stephanie Portersmith, Mark Mace Smith, Gaetana Tripetti and Michael Wilson.

Central Library Committee Room, Wednesday 8 July, 6-7.30

Anishinaabe Poetry: Two Native American Poets

Presented as part of Not Part Of (2-18 July), the complementary ‘fringe’ to the Manchester International Festival, which celebrates our creative city.

Kimberly Blaeser teaches Creative Writing and Native American Literature at the University of Wisconsin. Of Anishinaabe ancestry and an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, she is the editor of Stories Migrating Home: A Collection of Anishinaabe Prose and has three published collections.

Gordon Henry is Associate Professor of English at Michigan State University. His first novel, The Light People, won an American Book Award and his work has appeared in journals and anthologies in the US and Europe. He is an enrolled member of the White Earth Chippewa Tribe of Minnesota.

Central Library Committee Room, Thursday 2 July, 1-2

Andrew Losowsky & the Doorbells of Florence

Writer and photographer Andrew Losowsky captured the alluring and varied doorbells of Florence and then imagined the stories of those who might dwell within. Charming,
whimsical, and elegant, each story is a perfect match for its photo, balancing the old-world appeal of Florence and the contemporary, gritty realities of a modern city.

The book was born when Andrew posted photos of Florentine doorbells on the photo website Flickr.com, and filled in the captions with stories, inventing a whole
new genre that users of the site have dubbed flicktion. It went on to become a cult online hit, and to win the 2006 Lulu Blooker Prize for Fiction for books that began life on the internet.

Andrew Losowsky is an award-winning writer, editor and journalist whose stories have appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, The Wall Street Journal and The Times. This is his first fiction book.

Manchester Central Library
Committee Room, Second Floor
Saturday 4 July 2pm
FREE

For more information please contact Libby Tempest on 0161 234 1981
email: l.tempest@manchester .gov.uk Get involved at http://manchesterlitlist.blogspot.com

The Lakes: poets, painters and fell walkers

Treasures at Central Library

Explore the library’s literary links to romantic Lakeland: from Wordsworth to Wainwright, including eighteenth century guidebooks, prints, sketches and Swallows and Amazons!

Central Library, throughout June and July FREE

Refugees, Memory and the Local

Refugees have been part of the British experience for centuries, but remain largely absent in the historical record and invisible more generally in the world of heritage and commemoration.

This talk explores the issue, with particular reference to the Manchester region. Tony Kushner is the author of Remembering Refugees: Then and Now (2006) and Anglo-Jewry since 1066 (2009), both published by Manchester University Press.

Thursday 25 June, 6pm
Central Library Committee Room
FREE

Winifred Nicholson: an illustrated talk by Christopher Andreae

We are delighted to welcome author Christopher Andreae, who will talk about his new book, Winifred Nicholson (Lund Humphries). In the 1920s Winifred, experimenting alongside her husband Ben Nicholson, emerged as a ground-breaking painter. This is the first book for many years on this important British artist.

She studied painting privately with her grandfather, George James Howard, 9th Earl of Carlisle, a painter-friend of the Pre-Raphaelites, and then at the Byam Shaw School of Art in London. Winifred first exhibited her watercolours at the Royal Academy, London, in 1914. In 1919 she visited India, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Burma with her father, Charles Roberts, Under-Secretary of State for India, and acknowledged that this experience liberated her painting style and her palette.

In November 1920 she married Ben Nicholson in London. Having bought the Villa Capriccio, near Castagnola, Switzerland, in 1921, two years later she purchased Bankshead, a Cumbrian farmhouse built on Hadrian’s Wall, near to her ancestral home of Naworth Castle. Bankshead remained her base for the rest of her life.

Between 1921 and 1924 Nicholson and her husband painted landscapes and still-lifes in the winter in Switzerland and in the summer at Bankshead. In 1923 an exhibition of her work was held at Patterson’s Gallery, Bond St, London. During the early 1920s Nicholson became a Christian Scientist and concentrated in her painting on the metaphysical nature of the world. After the break-up of her marriage she went to Paris (1932–8), where she experimented with abstraction, and became a close friend of Piet Mondrian, Constantin Brancusi, César Domela, Jean Hélion and Hans Arp. From the 1950s to the 1970s she travelled to Greece, Morocco, France and the Scottish Islands on painting trips, seeking fresh experiences of colour and light.

Thursday 18 June, 6.30
Central Library Committee Room

Poetry in your lunch hour: Fred D’Aguiar at Central Library

Fred D’Aguiar is an acclaimed novelist, poet and playwright. He won the Whitbread First Novel award for The Longest Memory (1994) and his poetry has been shortlisted for the T S ELiot prize. He grew up in Guyana, which remains at the heart of his poetry. He has published four collections: his latest, Continential Shelf (Carcanet), traces a journey across continents, from youth to maturity. He is currently a professor at Virginia Tech State University.

Listen to the poet readng his own work over at the Poetry Archive or take a look at his writing on Google Books

Feeding the Ghosts - 1997 - 248 pages

Dear Future - 1996 - 224 pages

Bethany Bettany - 2003 - 328 pages

Wednesday 17 June, 1-2pm

Central Library Reception Room

Wolf Hall

I'm not normally a fan of historical novels, but 200 hundred pages into Wolf Hall and I'm hooked. Hilary Mantel's compelling reconstruction of life in Tudor England charts the rise of Thomas Cromwell from the son of a drunken blacksmith in Putney to Cardinal Wolsey's right hand man and Henry VIII's chief minister. It's so good I'm rationing myself.

Much of the plot is built around the marriage of Henry VIII and the doomed Boleyn sisters move in and out of the narrative in a series of fascinating scenes and vignettes. Discover more about Anne's character by listening to a new British Library podcast: Anne Boleyn's Book of Hours, with a remarkable intimate written dialogue between her and Henry VIII http://bit.ly/henry8pod.

You can also listen to Hilary Mantel discussing her novel, Wolf Hall, in a new Henry VIII podcast from the British Library http://bit.ly/henry8pod and read a review of the novel at The Guardian Books Blog. Reserve copy of Wolf Hall for free from the online catalogue and we will email you when the book is ready to collect

£10,000 up for grabs in The Manchester Fiction Prize

The Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University is launching The Manchester Fiction Prize – a new literary competition celebrating excellence in creative writing.

Open to writers internationally, this competition will award a cash prize of 10,000* to the writer of the best short story submitted. The competition is open to entrants aged 16 and over; there is no upper age limit.

In addition to the main prize, a bursary for study at MMU will be awarded to an entrant aged 18-25 as part of the Manchester Young Writer of the Year Award*. The deadline for entries is 7th August 2009. The judges are: Sarah Hall, M. John Harrison and Nicholas Royle
Entry fee: £15

For further details and to enter go to www.manchesterwritingcompetition.co.uk or contact James Draper on 0161 247 1787 or email j.draper@mmu.ac.uk

*Terms and Conditions apply. See: www.manchesterwritingcompetition.co.uk for further details.

Free seminar at Central Library: The Long Nineteenth Century

The first in a series of quarterly seminars to discuss the literature, history, science and medicine of the Long Nineteenth Century*.

This event, organised by the University of Salford, features:

Jan Golinski (University of New Hampshire) Revolution in the Public Mind: The Irish Science of Richard Kirwan

Amber Regis (Keele University)Erasing Digression from the Memoirs of John Addington Symonds

Brian Maidment (University of Salford) The Morphology of Mishap - London “Miseries” 1810-1850

Francesca Scott (University of Warwick) Mary Robinson, Charlotte Smith and the Sexual Female Body

The event will be in the Committee Room, Second Floor, Central Library on Wednesday 1 July 2-5pm. Free and open to all. No advance booking required.

We are grateful for the financial support of the University of Salford, the British Association for Romantic Studies, the British Association for Victorian Studies and Manchester Central Library.

Future events will be held on 3 October 2009, 6 January and 7 April 2010. For more details, please contact Sharon Ruston - s.ruston@salford.ac.uk

*The "long nineteenth century" refers to the period between the years 1789 and 1914. The period begins with the French Revolution and ends with the start of World War I. Explore this period in more detail at 19, a web journal dedicated to advancing interdisciplinary study in the long nineteenth century.

Shortlist for 2009 Theakstons Crime Novel of the Year

The shortlist for this year's Theakstons Crime Novel of the Year has been revealed...

Death Message - Mark Billingham
The Accident Man - Tom Cain
Bad Luck And Trouble - Lee Child
Gone To Ground - John Harvey
Ritual - Mo Hayder
The Garden of Evil - David Hewson
A Cure For All Diseases - Reginald Hill
The Colour Of Blood - Declan Hughes
Dead Man's Footsteps - Peter James
Broken Skin - Stuart MacBride
Beneath The Bleeding - Val McDermid
Exit Music - Ian Rankin
Friend Of The Devil - Peter Robinson
Savage Moon - Chris Simms

The number of female authors in the shortlist has doubled to two, compared to 2008's list! I'm going to start by reading Peter Robinson's Friend of the Devil, (my favourite Grateful Dead song) and then and I'll be casting my vote here (until 22nd July). The winner will be announced at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival on 23rd July. You can order any of these books from the online catalogue and we'll email you when your book is ready to collect.

Via Euro Crime

979 ISBN prefix makes first appearance

The Paris based French National ISBN Agency, AFNIL, has issued the first 979 prefix. The registration means that 979-prefix ISBNs will now begin appearing in the international book supply chain and more 979-prefixed ISBNs from larger ISBN agencies are expected.

This post should really come with a geek alert, but if you are curious about the ISBN system and history here are some articles which comment on the history of ISBN and its early development in 1965.

Get Wisdom!

Get Wisdom - Manchester Central Library 75th Anniversary Exhibition opens today.

Officially opened by King George V on 17 July 1934 Central Library has served the people of Manchester for 75 years. The Get Wisdom exhibition tells the story of the library though previously unseen archive documents and photos.

We want to borrow stories from you (for a change). Do you have any Central Library memories you’d like to share? Perhaps it’s where you made an amazing discovery, read something life-changing or met the love of your life? Whatever your connection with the library, you can add your story to the exhibition.

Manchester Central Library
First Floor Exhibition Area, St. Peter’s Square M2 5PD
5 June ~1 August

50 years of Big Brother

First published in 1949, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four has lost none of the impact with which it first hit readers and Penguin is celebrating by publishing a special 50th anniversary edition today. Over the last 50 years Nineteen Eighty-Four has had an extensive impact on our culture and language. Many of Orwell's concepts: Big Brother, Room 101, the Thought Police, unperson, doublethink and Newspeak are still in everyday use.

The Penguin Classics edition is £12.99 and is available from the Penguin website with free P&P, but, of course it's also available completely free of charge from your local library.

You can reserve 1984 or any other George Orwell book from the Manchester Libraries online catalogue and we will email you when the book is ready to collect. We have Nineteen Eighty-Four available in several different formats, so if you don't fancy reading the book why not watch the film on dvd or listen to a spoken word version on cassette or cd?

Orange Prize Won By Pulitzer-Winner American Marilynne Robinson

Samantha Harvey, a 34-year-old from Bath, had hoped she would take the women-only award for her first novel The Wilderness, about a man's struggle to maintain his identity as his brain is destroyed by Alzheimer's.

However, in the event judges decided to hand the £30,000 prize to Robinson for her novel Home. She accepted the award last night at a ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank in London.

More in The Telegraph

More in The Independent

And more in The Guardian

Two more social networks for booklovers

ReadWhale and BookArmy are two brand new social sites for book lovers. BookWhale gives users the ability to share books by creating groups, and the option to organise a virtual bookshelf. A nice touch is that books in every language are supported – that is, the title of the book is provided along with its translated equivalent so that everybody knows what each person is reading. Twitter is also fully supported.

If you need help choosing books then BookArmy might be what you are looking for. It bills itself "a meeting point for literature enthusiasts the world over". Essentially, Book Army is a social site that lets its users discuss the authors that they like best and comment on their works.

Both old and new authors are taken into consideration, and after you have created a profile it will be possible for you to receive recommendations based on the books that you included in your list of favorite titles. This virtual bookshelf can also be employed for instant comparison with other members of the community.