Julia DeakinAn award-winning poet with strong Manchester connections, Julia lived in Northenden and attended Central High School for Girls in Whitworth Street. She won the Northern Exposure Poetry Competition in 2006 and has had two collections published - Without a dog (Graft 2008) and the 2007 Poetry Business Competition winner, The Half-Mile High Club (Smith/Doorstop).
After a year in France au pairing, six teaching 11-18s and a fling with 80s advertising, she became a freelance writer and has not really looked back more than five or six times a day.
Her articles and reviews have appeared in Mslexia, The Observer and The Times Educational Supplement and more recently as a poet in numerous magazines including Stand, The Rialto and The North. She lives on a moor in West Yorkshire from which she can just about see some of her mentors - Simon Armitage, Ian McMillan and, on a clear day, Les Murray.
“Crafted, tender poems, written with passion and purpose. An
impressive debut” - Simon Armitage.
Read an article about Julia from the
Yorkshire Post
Rebecca GossBorn in 1974, Rebecca grew up in Suffolk and now lives in Liverpool. Her poems have appeared in many literary magazines including Ambit, Stand, Magma, Mslexia and Smiths Knoll. Her pamphlet collection Keeping Houston Time (Slow Dancer Press) was published in 1997 and her first full length collection is due from Flambard Press in 2010.
She has had success in competitions including the Bridport Prize, Way with Words/Mirehouse, writers-inc and The New Writer. She has read at venues nationwide, including London’s Troubadour cafe several times, most recently as part of a New Voices showcase in 2006.
Two of her poems have been made into
‘poem-films’ for Comma Film, a Literature North West project run in conjunction with Comma Press, dedicated to collaborations between local filmmakers and writers.
“A very clear voice, catching at the emotional drama of the world, its
strangeness, sexiness and occasionally its yearning.” - Robert Seatter
Friday 25 September
Committee Room, Second Floor 1-2pm
For more information please contact Libby Tempest on 0161 234 1981
email: l.tempest@manchester.gov.uk
