More bookish furniture: a custom made book side table

A custom stacked book side table designed for you by Jane Dandy could be yours for £1135 plus shipping (the designer's in San Francisco). Here's the Etsy link . (via The Centred Librarian).

Or how about a bare wire frame stuffed full of you favourite books instead of cushions? According to the designer, Stephan Schulz 'the user changes the ‘design’, and thus becomes the creator of an individual piece of furniture. Conceptually the open framework of the chair is meant to assist a creative acquisition, a ‘nesting’ process'. Hmm, if you say so Stephan....

I also love this lightweight recycled cardboard bookcase (above) by French designer Dany Gilles. Probably not very practical - I'm just a fan of cardboard furniture...

But my new favourite this week is Bow Shelving by Caroline Ziegler made from a lacquered steel structurandcork shelves. (Via BookcasePorn).

Win Hakan Nesser's Van Veeteren series at Eurocrime

Euro Crime has 5 sets of Hakan Nesser's Van Veeteren series (The Mind's Eye, Borkmann's Point, The Return, Woman with Birthmark and The Inspector and Silence) to giveaway. To enter the draw, answer the question and include your details in the form on the Eurocrime website. (This competition is open to UK residents only and will close on 3 May 2011).

OverDrive’s eBook & audiobook apps for Android & iPhone/iPad updated

Overdrive have released updates for their Android and iPhone/iPad apps, which include many enhancements that users have requested. When you install the updated apps on your device, here’s what you will see:
OverDrive Media Console for Android (v2.2)

• Sepia display option for eBooks
• Screen-dimming override for eBooks
• Faster EPUB performance
• Sleep timer for audiobooks

OverDrive Media Console for iPhone/iPad (v2.2.1)

• Orientation lock for eBooks
• Night mode and sepia display option for eBooks
• Screen lock override for eBooks
• Improved range of font size settings
• In-app library “Website Finder”

The in-app library “Website Finder” for iPhone/iPad is another step toward bringing the entire download experience into the app. You can now save a library’s digital collection website—before you download a title—simply by clicking on the “star” icon next to the collection’s name. This makes it even easier to return to a library’s website the next time you want to borrow an EPUB eBook or MP3 audiobook from the library. The Android and BlackBerry apps already had this functionality and the upcoming Windows Phone 7 app will, too.

The system requirements for the Android and iPhone/iPad apps are still the same. The free apps can be installed on phones and devices running the Android OS v1.5 (or newer) or iOS v4.0 (or newer). If you already have the apps installed on a device, you’ll receive an update notification. If you’re new to library eBook and audiobook apps, you can find the OverDrive apps in the Android Market, the iTunes App Store, or OverDrive’s software page.

Download free ebooks and audiobooks from the Manchester Library website....http://manchesterdownload.lib.overdrive.com. New to the service? Get started with a Guided Tour or our Quick-Start Guide.

2011 Desmond Elliott Prize for New Fiction longlist announced

The longlist for the Desmond Elliott Prize 2011, the award for a first novel published in the UK, has been announced:

The Afterparty by Leo Benidictus (Jonathan Cape)
Boxer Beetle by Ned Beauman (Sceptre)
Coconut Unlimited by Nikesh Shukla (Quartet)
The Collaborator by Mirza Waheed (Viking)
Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman (Bloomsbury)
Pub Walks in Underhill Country by Nat Segnit (Fig Tree)
Saraswati Parkby Anjali Joseph (Fourth Estate)
The Spider Truces by Tom Connolly (Myriad Editions)
A Vision of Loveliness by Louise Levene (Bloomsbury)
Who is Mr Satoshi? by Jonathan Lee (William Heinemann)

Worth £10,000 to the winner, the prize is named after the literary agent and publisher, Desmond Elliott. 'Charismatic, witty, and waspish, Elliott lived his life with verve. He drank only champagne, always crossed the Atlantic on Concorde and lunched at Fortnum and Mason.' The winner will be announced on Thursday 23 June at Fortnum and Mason.

Visit the Desmond Elliot Prize website.

40+ free tools for authors

A useful post by Teleread's Piotr Kowalczyk 'designed to give you a concise, yet comprehensive preview of most important free tools you can pick up to publish and promote your e-books. I hope it will help you discover the ones, which in a best possible way fit your author profile and personal needs.'

Read the full post at Teleread...

Visit the new look Poetry Foundation website

The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, has launched a new updated website. You can visit the redesigned site at www.poetryfoundation.org, which now features the full archive of Poetry magazine dating back to 1912 and a richer, faster browsing experience, among other improvements.

Reaching over half a million unique monthly visitors, poetryfoundation.org boasts a browsable archive of more than 10,000 poems and 1,800 poets. The new site makes finding poems and poets even easier with multiple search categories. Users can now conduct very specific queries—find, for example, that spring-themed 19th-century poem that mentions England—and share their findings with friends.

In addition to making specific poems simpler to find, the user-friendly site makes new poetry even easier to discover, offering poem recommendations via a dynamic browsing carousel on the sidebar of each page. Plus, regular users of the site may now register and keep a list of their favorite poems and poets at their virtual fingertips.

Parents will find an expanded children’s section, with monthly book picks from the children’s poet laureate. These picks—and all books mentioned throughout www.poetryfoundation.org—will now directly link to a site that allows readers to buy or borrow the books mentioned.

In advance of Poetry‘s centennial, the entire archive of the magazine will be available on the site for the first time. With PDFs of poems dating back to 1912, users will be able to see some of the most recognizable poems of the 20th century—like T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"— as they were originally presented in the magazine.

On Harriet, the Foundation blog, the editors of Poetry will highlight poems and prose from the historical archive and offer fresh perspectives and content that complements the current print issue, as well as take closer looks at other aspects of the magazine, including its cover art.

“In the five years since the original website launched, it has grown enormously—both in content and in audience. The new site makes improvements in both areas,” said online editor Catherine Halley. “We’ve made poems and poets structurally central to the site and, with our dynamic new browsing tool, users will be directed to additional material from our archive. All together, the new design and updated features will allow the site to reach a wider audience and introduce more people to poetry.”

Visit www.poetryfoundation.org to explore the new site and become a registered user.

Museums Press exhibition launch @ Islington Mill

Launched in June 2009 MUSEUMS PRESS is a small independent publishing house based in Manchester. Its publications have included a range of formats and subjects from heavily compiled books, comics and poster packages to photocopied fanzines and individual artists’ prints.

Having developed a reputation for distributing and producing independent zine’s the beginning of 2011 saw the launch of the SMALL PRESS series, within which a bespoke booklet or artists print is to be published every single month of the coming year.

With growing plans and ambitions the summer will see MUSEUMS PRESS release its “seminal, groundbreaking” MUSEUMS ANTHOLOGY. Pairing internationally renowned artists such as Keith Shore, Megan Whitmarsh, Brion Nuda Rosch, Jack Teagle and Anthony Zinonos with local practitioners including Mount Pleasant heroes David Bailey and Lucy Jones.

To mark the forthcoming publication an exhibition of illustrations from the book will be on show in the common room at Islington Mill. Join us for the opening of the exhibition on Thursday 28 April as part of the Say Something Series.

All events begin at 6pm and are free. Café till 8pm with special Student prices available. Bar till midnight.

John Siddique heads to City Library to launch Full Blood

We'd love to have the pleasure of your company for the Manchester launch of John Siddique's new book - Full Blood.

‘This is a brave and a bold book’ - Jackie Kay

‘A profoundly moving poetic interplay of tenderness, love and eroticism.’- Dr. Claire Chambers

‘John Siddique is a remarkable poet’ - David Tibet of Current 93

“We place ourselves, or are placed or paired creating stories, a new idea, sometimes love.” from Every Atom

We have quite an evening planned, please join us for the launch at City Library.

The Event:
Book launch
Reading
In conversation with Dr. Claire Chambers, Senior Lecturer in Post Colonial Literatures plus audience Q and A
Book signing

About Full Blood:

Full Blood is John Siddique's fourth full-length collection of poems for adults. Erotic, physical, completely open and fully engaged with the moral urgency of life, Siddique tackles his themes robustly and yet with great sensitivity, constantly defining and reimagining what it is to be a man in today's world, living fully in the moment. Marking a serious development in the writer's work (as well as the mind of this significant British poet) this is Siddique's most emotionally-charged work to date.

‘Full Blood invites you in easily, and then turns into one of those books that you can’t put down because it has become your close friend.’

Tuesday 5 May
City Library
151 Deansgate
Manchester
M3 3WD

More info at
www.johnsiddique.co.uk
www.saltpublishing.co.uk
Order online but your local bookshop is better.....

The Language Moment @ The Green Room

In a pre-festival partnership event with the Green Room, Manchester, the Text Festival presents an evening of virtuoso vocal performance and groundbreaking sound art featuring Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl, Maggie O’Sullivan, Phil Minton and Ben Gwilliam and Phil Davenport

Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl is an Icelandic poet and author of three novels. He works with performance and sound-poetry, and regularly appears at poetry and music festivals, as well as dabbling in the dark arts of the concrete. In the recent years he has explored the possibilities inherent in the European and North-American avant-garde traditions, and focused on disassembling language into its visual, social and linguistic units. Nothing can prepare you for the power and dexterity of his performance, the sonically richness of his sound poems, and his amazing control of his material. His huge contortions twist his mouth to stun the audience.

Phil Minton is a dramatic baritone with a free-form style of "extended techniques" that are extremely unsettling. His vocals often include the sounds of retching, burping, screaming, and gasping, as well as childlike muttering, whining, crying and deep-throated drones; he also has an ability to distort his vocal cords to produce two notes at once. Phil Minton's voice occupies a category apart, as joyously accessible as it is radical.

For over thirty years, Maggie O’Sullivan has been one of the leading figures of British innovative poetry. An international performer and visual artist, she is committed to excavating language in all its multiple voices and tongues, known and unknown, in visceral gestures that collage and pulverization at the service of a rhythmic vortex.

Phil Davenport & Ben Gwilliam are artists engaged in collaborative practice across different artforms: Davenportthe poet and Gwilliam the sound artist merge experimental language through the infrathin processing of the silence between sounds.

The event will also feature specially commissioned sound art interventions in various Green Room Spaces.

Ticket Prices: £9.50/£6.50

Green Room
54-56 Whitworth St West
Manchester M1 5WW
0161 615 0500

Station Stories

THE EXPERIENCE

Live performances at Manchester Piccadilly Station to a private audience in headphones, in a very public place, taken on a trip of conspiracy, murder, love and revenge...

Station stories is a unique, site specific, live, literature performance event using digital technology and improvised electronic sound. From platform to platform, café to café and shop to shop, six writers take you on a creative trip at Piccadilly station and read specially commissioned stories. Our published and award winning writers include: David Gaffney, Jenn Ashworth, Nicholas Royle, Peter Wild, Tom Jenks and Tom Fletcher. Sound Artist: Daniel Hopkins

HOW IT WORKS

You are at Manchester Piccadilly Railway Station

You are wearing headphones.

You are with a group other people, also wearing headphones

The stations is crowded, people rushing everywhere.

You can hear someone speaking in your headphones. She is telling you a story. It’s about the station. The other headphone wearers can hear it too

The reader of the story is somewhere in the crowd, she is reading the story now, it s live. You can hear the sounds of the station behind her voice.

You try to pick her out from the crowd, try to spot a woman with a microphone.

Eventually she comes into view. She ‘s a long way away but you can see her walking towards you. She continues to tell the story. She talks to rail travelers around her They don’t know she is telling a story. They don’t know she is transmitting live.

They don’t know about us.

This is story telling with a difference.

This is performance with a difference

This is

Station stories.

Thursday 19th May – Saturday 21st May 2011
Manchester Piccadilly Train Station
Tickets www.stationstories.com

Check out the exclusive preview of the @stationstories accompanying music
For a sneak preview of the images for the #stationstories exhibition at Piccadilly check out our Facebook page

Launch of The Manchester Art Crawl

The Manchester Art Crawl is an artist led event originally devised by art students at Manchester School of Art and is one of the official events of the 'Not Part Of' festival running alongside The Manchester International Festival.

The 15th April will see an introduction to the Manchester Art Crawl at Islington Mill and the launch of the 2011 festival open submissions and allow those interested in being involved with the Crawl to gather. There's more on Facebook...

All information regarding the application process for The 2011 Manchester Art Crawl will be made available. Artists can meet each other and the organisers to chat and possibly start work shopping ideas ahead of the 14 May application deadline.

There will be written, visual and audio research relating to the vision of The Art Crawl. This can be added to by all in attendance. Bring your ideas and work. A knees up will be scheduled to start at 9pm with bands, live art and sound art.

Bands - Electromotive, I am Mechanical, Primate Engineer and Fonik
Tickets will be £3 on the door.

S J Fowler - Book Launch

SJ Fowler book launch at the Blue Bus

 

{Red Museum}

with the North West's  Knives, Forks & Spoons Press

www.knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk

April Tuesday 19th 7.30pm

at The Lamb, 94 Lamb’s Conduit Street,
London WC1N 3LZ

'A tremendous and persuasive surge of the red and the black: conflicted doctrines, scorched paper. Gothic scripts and plague-year screenplays for an apocalyptic cinema. Death chess. Heretical crusades. Hurt flesh. Fire angels. Madness. A grimoire for a haunted river-city. The poetry lies in the interpretation of malfated woodcuts. It is sinewy, knotted, persistent. And true.'

Iain Sinclair

Also to be released, the chapbooks:

Fights XIX: Johnny Tapia with Oystercatcher press www.oystercatcherpress.com

Fights XX: the Songs of Salvador Sánchez with the Red Ceilings press www.theredceilingspress.co.uk

Library Theatre Company present Hard Times at Murrays' Mills

Tickets for Hard Times, the Library Theatre Company’s first site-specific production since moving out of Manchester Central Library last year, went on sale yesterday. But you'll have to be quick if you want one as there are only 23 performances, and 80 tickets per performance for the company’s world premiere adaptation by Charles Way of Charles Dickens’ gritty novel of mill-life in the mid-19th century industrial town of Coketown.

The prosperity of Coketown, dominated by hardline educationalist Thomas Gradgrind and the overbearing businessman Josiah Bounderby, is built on the cotton mills where thousands of men and women slave away.

Gradgrind’s doctrine, which banishes imagination and trumpets only the importance of facts and material progress, damages his children Louisa and Tom, leading to scandal and disaster.

Hard Times will be a promenade production, with the audience being taken through the mill as the performance progresses, and will be performed in the atmospheric setting of Murrays’ Mills, a restored Victorian mill in Ancoats, the old industrial quarter of Manchester.

The production will be directed by Chris Honer, the Library Theatre Company’s Artistic Director; Colin Sell, well known as the long-serving resident pianist on BBC Radio 4’s I’m Sorry, I Haven’t A Clue, is composing the music; while Mish Weaver of Stumble danceCircus will be directing the circus scenes. The 11-strong acting company will be complemented by two circus performers and a community company of 15-20 local people, including one member who worked at Murrays’ Mills when it was a cotton mill.

“The audience can expect to get a real feeling of life in a 19th century mill-town,” says director Chris Honer, “and also to experience a compelling journey through damaged childhoods, overbearing businessmen, circus wonders, forbidden romance, industrial strife, a bank robbery, and redemptive love. The world of Coketown will come alive in the atmospheric surroundings that Murrays’ Mills will give us.”

Hard Times opens on Wednesday 8 June, and runs nightly (except Sunday) until Saturday 2 July. There will be a strict entry time printed on each ticket. Tickets Mon-Thu £20 (concs £15); Fri/Sat £22 - are now on sale via from the Library Theatre Company website at www.librarytheatre.com/hardtimes or on 0843 208 0500.

Born or made? Can creative writing be taught? Join the debate @ City Library tomorrow

Are writers born or made? Can creative writing be taught? Join us for an evening of lively discussion with writers Jane Rogers, Rachel Genn and Sherry Ashworth.

Jane Rogers has impeccable writing credentials, having published 7 novels (including Island, The Voyage Home and Mr. Wroe's Virgins), won many awards for her writing (including the Somerset Maugham Award, Writers' Guild Best Fiction Book and Guardian Fiction Prize runner-up), and written many original & adapted scripts for TV & radio (including The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton for Radio 4 and her own novel Island, adapted as a Frdiay night play for Radio 4). In 1994, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Jane teaches on the creative writing course at Sheffield Hallam University and has become very interested in how and why creative writing is taught - and even whether writing creatively is something that can be taught at all?

Rachel Genn's first novel The Cure is about to be published by Constable & Robinson - she worked on it as part of her Creative Writing MA at Sheffield Hallam under the tuition of Jane Rogers, whose eighth novel, The Testament of Jessie Lamb, has just been published by Sandstone Press.

Rachel and Jane will talk about the student/teacher relationship for writers, looking at the ups & downs of taking a writing course, the shared enthusiasms, the issue of influence, and how a course can help a writer to achieve publication.

They will both read from their new novels, and sign copies. There will be time for discussion & debate! This event will be of particular interest to all students & staff on any kind of Creative Writing course and to anyone who is attempting to write creatively  -  but also to anyone who is more generally interested in literature and the novel.

The event will be chaired by SHERRY ASHWORTH, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University and herself the author of many popular novels for adults and young people.

Tuesday 12 April at 6pm in the Becker Room.
City Library
Elliott House
151 Deansgate
Manchester M3 3WD

Call for applications - Literature Northwest Publishing Mentorship Scheme

From autumn 2011, Literature Northwest is offering the opportunity for employees of North West presses to take part in a mentoring programme giving you the the opportunity to learn first-hand by accessing the advice and experience of industry experts, augment your skills, and make invaluable contacts.

The Mentorship Programme will comprise of 2 strands:

1) A visit to your mentor's place of work, to shadow them for several days.
2) A series of regular follow-up meetings (or video conference meetings, as appropriate) with your mentor, to review the implementation of what you've learned, and access further advice.

Candidates for the Mentoring Scheme will be selected on submission of an application form, stating who you wish to be mentored by, why you have selected this press/department/person, and how you hope this will enhance your skills and benefit you as a publisher.

Visit Comma Press for more details and an application form. The deadline for applications is  noon Wednesday 4 May 2011.

Zombie author brings reading to life for Manchester pupils

Children’s author Charlie Higson is set to keep 300 of Manchester’s pupils on the edge of their seats - as he tells them how he created a world which pits kids against shambling, flesh-eating zombies.

The author will be in Manchester this afternoon (7 April), in a visit organised by Manchester Libraries with Puffin Books, as part of his national tour to launch his latest book, The Dead.

The Dead continues a story about a group of kids that survive a worldwide sickness that turns all adults to zombies. Charlie is also the author of the Young Bond series, which includes bestsellers Silver Fin and Hurricane Gold.

In total, 300 year 7, 8 and 9 pupils will be attending the event which is being held at MMU on Thursday. Charlie will be reading extracts from his latest novel as well as taking questions from the audience.

Speaking about the visit, Charlie said: "I love the vibrancy of Manchester and the creative talent it has nurtured. During the 1980s I was in a band called The Higsons and we were lucky enough to play at several Manchester venues - including The Hacienda - so I'm looking forward to seeing the city again.

"I really enjoy meeting the youngsters who read my books and chatting to them about my love of horror. I hope they will go on to write their own thrillers.

"I'm particularly pleased to be doing the event with Manchester Libraries because I'm passionate about the importance of libraries and the role they play in developing readers."

Finding free ebooks online

It's not always easy to find free ebooks online. Project Gutenberg is probably the most famous online ebook library, and it now boasts a mobile friendly interface so you can download ebooks to your phone - handy for a short bus ride, but a bit hard on your eyes if you're reading for longer.

I keep up to date with news on ebooks, publishing and related subjects by reading the Teleread blog and they recently recommended Finding Free E-books Online . It's a really useful blog listing recent free ebooks, with an emphasis on new titles. Free Literature is another handy site with a huge collection of links to free ebooks and digitized library sites.  It covers literature, poetry, music, classical Greek and Latin, audiobooks and more.  Sites are collected from all over the world and in many languages.

Our new office favourite is The University of Adelaide's free ebook site. The simple design and neat presentation of the site make it a pleasure to use. The site's editor, Stephen Thomas, writes that the purpose of this site is "to provide access to the “classic” works of civilisation; to promote reading of the same; and for the editor to have fun!"

"There are many sites offering classic works in one form or another. Putting them into a format which readers might actually enjoy using is a challenge which I enjoy. If others benefit from it, so much the better."

And while we're on the subject of ebooks it's time for a blatent plug! Did you know you can now download ebooks for free from the Manchester Libraries website? Visit the Download service to choose from thousands of titles including lots of bestsellers in fiction and non fiction plus free audiobooks for your iPod or MP3 player.

Pandril Press launches with Panopticon

A new Manchester press welcomes you to the launch of their collection of short stories from seven exciting writers: Paul Beatty, Dave Chadwick, Lucia Cox, Ros Davis, Iris Feindt, Nicky Harlow and Alison Jeapes.

Pandril Press is launching with an anthology of new short stories, Panopticon. Come and enjoy the evening at the International Anthony Burgess Centre, show your support, listen to contributors read, enjoy a glass of wine - and be merry! Copies of Panopticon will be available to buy on the night, and Comma and Nightjar presses will be selling copies of their books, too.

Thursday 5 May 6.30 pm - 9.30

The International Anthony Burgess Foundation

Engine House, Chorlton Mill, 3 Cambridge Street

Manchester

Follow Pandril press on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pages/Pandril-Press/199254343437827

Finalists announced for Man Booker International

Thirteen writers have made it on to the judges' list of finalists under serious consideration for the fourth Man Booker International Prize, the £60,000 award which recognises one writer for his or her achievement in fiction. The authors come from eight countries, five are published in translation and there are four women on the list.

One writer has previously won the annual Man Booker Prize for Fiction and two have been shortlisted. Famously, another, John le Carré, asked that his books should not be submitted for the annual prize to give less established authors the opportunity to win. The thirteen authors on the list are:

Wang Anyi (China)
Juan Goytisolo (Spain)
James Kelman (UK)
John le Carré (UK)
Amin Maalouf (Lebanon)
David Malouf (Australia)
Dacia Maraini (Italy)
Rohinton Mistry (India/Canada)
Philip Pullman (UK)
Marilynne Robinson (USA)
Philip Roth (USA)
Su Tong (China)
Anne Tyler (USA)

The judging panel for the Man Booker International Prize 2011 consists of writer, academic and rare-book dealer Dr. Rick Gekoski (Chair), publisher, writer and critic Carmen Callil, and award-winning novelist Justin Cartwright