Foyle Young Poets closes for entries midnight Sunday

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

T-minus 48 hours & counting: Foyle Young Poets closes for entries midnight Sunday 31st July 2011!

The award is a chance for any young poet aged 11-17 to be discovered and accelerate their writing careers. Since it began 14 years ago the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award has kick-started the careers of some of today’s most exciting young poets.

Full details & to enter online: www.foyleyoungpoets.org

10 unconventional bookshops...

* An illegal speakeasy, a barge, an abandoned factory, a Spanish castle and a barbers all feature in this great post from Flavorwire - 10 Unconventional Bookstores For Your Browsing Pleasure http://bit.ly/qvJkkb.



* Warning: No Manchester content

Man Booker Dozen announced

The 2011 Man Booker Prize fiction longlist was announced yesterday. The list includes one former Man Booker Prize winner; two previously shortlisted writers and one longlisted author; four first time novelists and three Canadian writers. The titles were chosen by a panel of five judges chaired by author and former Director-General of MI5, Dame Stella Rimington.

Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending (Jonathan Cape - Random House)
Sebastian Barry On Canaan's Side (Faber)
Carol Birch Jamrach's Menagerie (Canongate Books)
Patrick deWitt The Sisters Brothers (Granta)
Esi Edugyan Half Blood Blues (Serpent's Tail - Profile)
Yvvette Edwards A Cupboard Full of Coats (Oneworld)
Alan Hollinghurst The Stranger's Child (Picador - Pan Macmillan)
Stephen Kelman Pigeon English (Bloomsbury)
Patrick McGuinness The Last Hundred Days (Seren Books)
A.D. Miller Snowdrops (Atlantic)
Alison Pick Far to Go (Headline Review)
Jane Rogers The Testament of Jessie Lamb (Sandstone Press)
D.J. Taylor Derby Day (Chatto & Windus - Random House)

The Kindlegraph

Kindlegraph lets authors send personalized inscriptions and signatures ("kindlegraphs") directly to the electronic reading devices of their fans. The service is free, and it is powered by Twitter - you authenticate who you are by signing in to Twitter, and once you have done so you can request an autograph. If your chosen author accepts, the autograph will be sent straight to your Kindle. I think it's a sweet idea, but does it work? Has anyone tried it out? Let us know in the comments...

To see it in action, watch the screencast.

kindlegraph.com

2011 CWA Gold Dagger shortlist announced

The longlist for the 2011 CWA Gold Dagger was announced at the at the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival on Friday, 22 July.

The eight authors in contention for this year's coveted prize are, in alphabetical order:

Tom Franklin Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter (Macmillan)

Lucretia Grindle The Villa Triste (Mantle)

Steve Hamilton The Lock Artist (Orion)

Mo Hayder Hanging Hill (Bantam Press)

Michael Koryta The Cypress House (Hodder & Stoughton)

M. J. McGrath White Heat (Mantle)

A.D. Miller Snowdrops(Atlantic Books)

Denise Mina The End of the Wasp Season (Orion)

CWA

Reserve books, ebboks and audibooks for free from the library's online catalogue...

blankpages seeking poetry and fiction editor

blankpages, Blank Media Collective’s online magazine for emerging artists, is looking for a Poetry Editor and Fiction Editor to join a dedicated team of volunteers. 


blankpages magazine, part of Blank Media Collective, champions emerging artists, writers, musicians and performers by showcasing their work in their monthly digital magazine.


Reporting to the Editor and Assistant Editor, you will be seeking out exceptional poetic/ prose fiction talent, and showcasing it in blankpages’ monthly online issue. A creative flare is essential, as is the ability to spot engaging and exciting work.


Think you've got what it takes? Have a look at the job spec for more information... 
http://www.blankmediacollective.org/news/comments/opportunity_blankpages_editors

Coders and Poets - Join your forces!

Coders and poets - join forces for a speculative 1-day workshop, looking to explore how poet/writers and coder/artists can bring their skills together to make new experimental work.


The brief:
"A dynamic piece of writing which changes as you experience it, in response to data/linguistic information in the real world or online"

The day will run as follows:
10am - 12pm: Presenting solutions
Lunch
1pm - 5pm: Developing new work / Play-time

Where: Mad Lab in Manchester, Manchester Digital Laboratory, 36-40 Edge Street Manchester M4 1HN

When: Thursday 28th July – 10am-5pm

This project is led by Nathan Jones and John O'Shea
Partners:
http://www.mercyonline.co.uk/
http://www.re-dock.org

The Guardian first book award submissions 2011 (UK)

Publishers have submitted 136 titles for the Guardian first book award 2011 . The Guardian is also asking bloggers and booksellers to suggest overlooked or missing debut novelists to the Book Blog and so far 111 comments have been submitted with one contributor suggesting the Guardian 'launching a parallel audience prize for first book where all submissions come from readers rather than publishers'. Makes sense to me! Maybe we need a Manchester award where the city's readers vote for their favourite literary debut? Who would you have included on the Guardian's list?  

Take a look at the first Ebook vending machine...

A new ebook vending machine was on display at the Tokyo Ebook Fair last week. Japan is a country known for selling almost anything in vending machines, so it should come as no surprise to see one for ebooks. For more on this story hop over to the-digital-reader.com (via Teleread).

Don't forget library members can download free ebooks and audiobooks from Manchester Libraries. Just visit manchesterdownload.lib.overdrive.com. New to the service? Get started with a Guided Tour or our Quick-Start Guide.

Not a library member - join online!

Fill in our simple online form and we'll give you a membership number. You can use this to make reservations, write reviews and to access online reference materials straight away. Then just visit any of our libraries, we'll give you a ticket and you can start borrowing.

Forward Poetry Prize shortlist announced

Britain's Sean O'Brien is among those shortlisted for this year's Forward Prize for Poetry, an award he has won on three previous occasions.

His work November will compete in the best collection category, as will Night by David Harsent - another previous recipient of the £10,000 prize.

Sean, who helped us say farewell to Manchester Central Library at a reading in March 2010, can be seen performing in the Great Hall here.


John Burnside, Geoffrey Hill, Michael Longley and D Nurkse are also cited.

For more information on the shortlist visit the BBC website here

Join us for the launch of Angela Smith's new book

Those of you active on Manchester's live poetry scene might already know Angela Smith, Puppywolf's latest author signing. Join Angela on Wednesday 20 July for the launch of her new collection of poetry: This is the Me I Would Be if I Dared.

Angela Smith has everything that defines a good poet: range, dexterity and intelligence, and also an impish sense of fun. A favourite on the Manchester live scene, yet producing poetry that reads beautifully on the page, her work inspects love and everyday existence from oblique angles. Angela was born in the Rhondda Valley and wrote her first poem at the age of seven

The event is free entry and takes place at the Becker Room, 1st Floor, City Library, 151 Deansgate, Manchester, M3 3WD (the library that's a stand-in for Central Library while it's being renovated). It begins at 6.30pm and lasts an hour. Angela will be joined by existing Puppywolf author Cathy Bryant, along with Emma Decent and Steph Pike.

Visit the Puppywolf website.

 

Stop Press! Poet Mihaela Moscaliuc will be joining Michael Waters and Malcolm Carson tonight at City Library

Shoestring poets Michael Waters and Malcolm Carson (TONIGHT 6.30pm, City Library) will also be joined
by the poet and translator Mihaela Moscaliuc.  Mihaela was born in  Romania and has recently published Father Dirt (Alice James Books) 2010.  She also co-translated Carmelia Leonte's Death Searches for You a Second Time, 2003, and teaches at Monmouth University and on the MFA programmme at Drew University.

How to use social media to get your book to #1 on Amazon

Novelist John Green has used social media to push his book to number one in the charts on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. John Green’s work-in-progress novel, “The Fault in Our Stars”, reached the top spot on both Amazon’s and B&N’s sales charts last week less than 24 hours after he promoted it through his social networks, and without the help of his publisher, Dutton Children’s Books. Find out how he did it over at the Teleread blog. Follow John Green on Twitter.

Project Gutenberg is 40! Download a free history...

To commemorate its 40th anniversary this week, Marie Lebert has written a history of Project Gutenberg, from its first document on 4 July 1971 to the posting of its 30,000th book in April 2011 (“The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia”). You can download the PDF at gutenbergnews.org

Have you tried the Project Gutenberg mobile site? It's simple to download books straight onto your netbook, pc, phone, kindle or iPad. If you have a qr code reader on your phone scan the code above and you'll be taken right there!

Polari First Book Prize for queer fiction

The long list for the Polari First Book Prize for Queer Fiction has been announced:

Julian Corkle Is A Filthy Liar – DJ Connell
Same Again Please - Michael B Jones
London Triptych – Jonathan Kemp
The Bird Keeper – Issy Festing
Love, Hope and High Heels – Clare Campbell
I Don’t Remember You – Stephanie Lennox
Children of the Sun – Max Schaefer
Autofellatio – James Maker
Homo Jihad – Timothy Graves
C'est La Vie – Bruce Hodson


Among this year’s judges is chair and host, Time Out’s Gay and Lesbian Editor Paul Burston; he and his team announced the final long list at the London Literature Festival on July 4th (winners will be announced on September 19).

We've already got about half of the list in stock at the library and you can reserve them for free at the online catalogue - we'll email you when it's ready to collect. Why not 'suggest' we buy the other titles on the list too - using our 'suggest a book' form also on the online catalogue...

OMGryffindor! Harry Potter fan art

Enjoy nine beautiful Harry Potter inspired comic/posters over at Lucy Knisley's blog.  Lucy has created a comic for each of the films and has generously made each one available to download in a large format for a limited time only...
(via Kottke.org)

That Day We Sang - take a look at the original 1929 choir...

Victoria Woods new play debuts tonight at part of the Manchester International Festival. The story was inspired by a now iconic concert which took place in 1929 featuring 250 local schoolchildren and the Halle Orchestra. For a larger version of the photo visit the Manchester Archives Flickr gallery. You can also buy a 10"x8" print of the photo for £7.00 from the library website.

This 1929 photo of the original Manchester Elementary Schools Children's Choir was taken on 24th June 1929 at the Free Trade Hall With the Halle Orchestra, after the recording session (which produced the popular rendition of Purcell's `Nymphs and Shepherds') for Columbia Records.

The Choir consisted of 60 boys and 190 girls, aged 9 to 14, drawn from 50 schools (mainly `central') all over Manchester. The choir was predominantly working-class since those children whose parents could afford musical instruments and music lessons went into the school children's orchestra; Mr. Rose estimates that a third of the choir's parents were unemployed; the children were taught to sing phonetically to erase local dialect.

The photograph is unique in that it records the only collaboration between the universally renowned orchestra and a choir of 250 working class school children lacking conventional musical training, (Grammar School pupils were assumed to have no time to spare for non-academic endeavours such as this, which required two evenings a week rehearsal throughout the whole academic year). As the prints cost 5/- each at the time, the children, given their background, could not afford copies (only six of the 180 members Mr. Rose was able to contact in 1975 held a copy). The photograph was arranged spontaneously, thus the children are not in concert dress, but dressed in school uniform or evening clothes and they are out of formation; it is the first photograph of any sort of the choir.

The photograph shows the old Free Trade Hall, before the interior was destroyed during the bombing of 1940-41. The orchestra consists entirely of men because of the conductor's, Hamilton Harty, insistence that, during the depression, women were not to be employed as they might be taking a place that a man, as the dominant bread-winner of a family, could fulfil.

The adults on the photograph are: left foreground, left background and centre middle - Registrars from Manchester Education Committee; centre foreground - Walter Carroll (Music Advisor to Manchester Education Committee, 1923-1935, the first such appointment made in the Country), Gertrude Riall (Carroll's assistant), and Hamilton Harty (Conductor of the Halle Orchestra); right middle - Edna Jamieson (Accompaniest to the choir); the remainder are members of the Halle Orchestra.

The Manchester School-Children's choir existed from 1925-1939 and grew out of the combined choirs (from 3,4, or 5 schools and consisting of about 50 choiristers) which, starting in 1923 gave concerts - usually in local Town Halls - during Civic Week. The concert with the Halle lasted from 1929 until Walter Carroll's retirement in 1935.

Find out more about the Manchester Internation Festival here.

We love this book!

We Love This Book is a brand new website and also a quarterly magazine that aims to bring reading to life and help you discover great new books, authors and genres. The site is free to use but if you do register you'll receive a monthly newsletter and will be informed about events near you. In phase two, you will be able to flag up book reviews in the genres you like.

We Love This Book is published by the The Bookseller Group, which is the company behind The Bookseller magazine and website. They plan to work with specialist bookshops, reading groups, libraries and festivals and any book lover who wants to get involved.  If you go to the Frequently Asked Questions section on the website then you will see how to become part of the community.

Visit We Love This Book.

Roll up for Circus Stars - the 2011 Summer Reading Challenge!

Roll up! Roll up! Libraries are staging a summer spectacular, where children winning prizes for reading their favourite books! If you know someone aged five or more pick them up a  FREE Circus Stars pack in the library.

It's simple to join in. Children need to find six books - any books - joke books, magic books, vampires or fairies; Mr Greedy, Mr Stink or Mr Gum. They borrow them during the summer holidays, enjoy them, bring them back and that’s it.

Once the challenge is completed all children win a certificate and medal, plus stickers and treats along the way. They'll also be entered into a prize draw to win a goodie bag - there’s one up for grabs at every library - or the grand prize, a Nintendo Wii!

We also have also have nearly 60 brilliant circus-themed activities to keep children busy during the holidays...and that’s not all: pay a visit to www.circus-stars.org.uk to create a circus avatar, play games and meet your favourite authors. Go online in the library!

Poetry Connections: a double bill featuring K. Satchidanandan

A cross-continental poetry performance blending languages and movement will be showcased for the first time in the UK in Manchester on the 1st of July.

Poetry Connections is a coming-together of European and Indian poets who met in 2010 in South India and who are now bringing their innovative performance to Manchester, showing what happens when the poetic cultures encounter each other through translation and performance.

UK poets W.N. Herbert and Zoe Skoulding welcome Bengali poet Sampurna Chattarji, the radical and outspoken Tamil activist-poet Meena Kandasamy, poet and editor Robin Ngangom from the very north east corner of India and Swiss German-language poet and rapper Raphael Urweider.

They are joined by the legendary Kerala poet K. Satchidanandan, one of the stars of Malayalam poetry, who will read in the first part of this special poetry double bill.

The event takes place on Friday 1st July, at 6.30 pm at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Manchester. It’s free and drinks and Indian nibbles will be served!

This event is organised by Literature Across Frontiers and the German Book Office, New Delhi, with kind support from the British Council, Pro Helvatia and the Culture Programme of the European Commission and Manchester Mela (Sat 23rd & Sun 24th July @ Plattfields, Manchester).

You can watch a short film of the Poetry Connections encounter in India at http://vimeo.com/19903594 . The Poetry Connections blog is http://dubioussaints.wordpress.com . You can also the Literature Across Frontiers
Facebook page for further updates on LAF’s work.

Help shape World Book Night 2012

The inaugural World Book Night took place on Saturday March 5th 2011, two days after World Book Day, when one million books were given away. The next World Book Night will be Monday 23 April 2012 and the World Book Night team are looking for 20,000 people to give away one of 25 specially chosen titles.

YOU can also help shape World Book Night 2012 by nominating your ten favourite books - the books you most love to read, give and share - to give them a chance to be featured in next year's list. Simply sign up or login at the World Book Night 2012 website and tell everyone what books really matter to you...

How do I submit my favourite books?
1. Go to www.worldbooknight.org
2. Sign in or register as a user
3. Go to ‘My Favourite Books’ and type the titles and/or authors of your favourite books into the search box
4. Drag and drop to change the order of your favourites from 1 to 10. You can add more (or less) than 10 books but each book you add will replace the book at no. 10
5. You can change your list as many times as you like. We’ll be basing the final top 100 on everyone’s favourites at midnight on August 31.
6. Tell everyone you know - we want to collect as many lists as possible