Manchester Literature Festival @ City Library presents Hallie Rubenhold

October 10-23 sees the sixth Manchester Literature Festival, when our city welcomes a fantastic array of writers from across the world. The 2011 line-up includes Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, Sarah Dunant, Antonia Fraser, Anthony Horowitz, Andrew Motion and many more distinguished and critically acclaimed guests.
As usual, the library service is playing its part, with five top quality events in City Library’s beautiful Becker Room.

Hallie Rubenhold is an historian and broadcaster and an authority on British 18th-century social history. Mistress of My Fate is her first novel and will begin a series entitled The Confessions of Henrietta Lightfoot. In her candid and eyebrow-raising memoirs, the unforgettable Henrietta seeks to set the record straight about the events that shaped her.

Hallie is the author of the acclaimed study of Georgian low-life, The Covent Garden Ladies and Lady Worsley’s Whim: An Eighteenth-century Tale of Sex, Scandal and Divorce. She also acts as an historical expert for television, including working as advisor on the Channel 4 series City of Vice. Find out more about Hallie on website http://www.hallierubenhold.com/my-books.html

Monday 17 October, 1.00pm

Becker Room
City Library
Elliot House
151 Deansgate
manchester
M3 3WD

Manchester Literature Festival @City Library presents Marilyn Heward Mills

October 10-23 sees the sixth Manchester Literature Festival, when our city welcomes a fantastic array of writers from across the world. The 2011 line-up includes Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, Sarah Dunant, Antonia Fraser, Anthony Horowitz, Andrew Motion and many more distinguished and critically acclaimed guests.
As usual, the library service is playing its part, with five top quality events in City Library’s beautiful Becker Room.

Marilyn Heward Mills discusses her latest novel The Association of Foreign Spouses. Set in Ghana in the turbulent 1980s, it tells the story of Eva, who arrives in the country with visions of a paradise, inspired by her new husband’s exuberant praise of his homeland.

The reality of draining heat and humidity, bare shelves in the shops and intermittent water stoppages remind her how far she is from the comforts of England. How she and her new-found friends cope forms the core of this engrossing story.

Marilyn Heward Mills was born in Switzerland and brought up in Ghana. Her first novel, Cloth Girl, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award.

Admission is free, but advanced booking is strongly advised, as space is limited. You can book your place at these, or any other festival events by calling 0843 208 0500 or visiting www.manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk

Friday 14 October, 1.00pm

Becker Room
City Library
Elliot House
151 Deansgate
Manchester
M3 3WD

Calling all sci-fi fans...

Manchester's sci-fi book club, which meets monthly at Madlab in the Northern Quarter, have announced their book choices for the next four months. The next meeting is Tuesday 18 October and you're invited!

October's book is Rule 34 by Charles Stross.

DI Liz Kavanaugh: You realise policing internet porn is your life and your career went down the pan five years ago. But when a fetishist dies on your watch, the Rule 34 Squad moves from low priority to worryingly high profile. Anwar: As an ex-con, you'd like to think your identity fraud days are over. Especially as you've landed a legit job (through a shady mate). Although now that you're Consul for a shiny new Eastern European Republic, you've no idea what comes next. The Toymaker: Your meds are wearing off and people are stalking you through Edinburgh's undergrowth. But that's ok, because as a distraction, you're project manager of a sophisticated criminal operation. But who's killing off potential recruits? So how do bizarre domestic fatalities, dodgy downloads and a European spamming network fit together? The more DI Kavanaugh learns, the less she wants to find out.  

November is Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.  Ender's Game took the sf world by storm, winning both the Hugo and Nebula, and rose to the top of national bestseller lists.

Andrew "Ender" Wiggin thinks he is playing computer simulated war games; he is, in fact, engaged in something far more desperate. The result of genetic experimentation, Ender may be the military genius Earth desperately needs in a war against an alien enemy seeking to destroy all human life.

In January we'll be stepping into the world of noir phantasmagoria and reading Zoo City by Lauren Beukes, the second novel from the author of  the highly-acclaimed Moxyland.

Zinzi has a Sloth on her back, a dirty 419 scam habit and a talent for finding lost things. But when a little old lady turns up dead and the cops confiscate her last paycheck, she’s forced to take on her least favourite kind of job – missing persons. Being hired by reclusive music producer Odi Huron to find a teenybop pop star should be her ticket out of Zoo City, the festering slum where the criminal underclass and their animal companions live in the shadow of hell’s undertow. Instead, it catapults Zinzi deeper into the maw of a city twisted by crime and magic, where she’ll be forced to confront the dark secrets of former lives – including her own.

 And it's the classic Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury for February.

Guy Montag is a book-burning fireman undergoing a crisis of faith. His wife spends all day with her television "family," imploring Montag to work harder so that they can afford a fourth TV wall. Their dull, empty life sharply contrasts with that of his next-door neighbor Clarisse, a young girl thrilled by the ideas in books, and more interested in what she can see in the world around her than in the mindless chatter of the tube. When Clarisse disappears mysteriously, Montag is moved to make some changes, and starts hiding books in his home. Eventually, his wife turns him in, and he must answer the call to burn his secret cache of books. After fleeing to avoid arrest, Montag winds up joining an outlaw band of scholars who keep the contents of books in their heads, waiting for the time society will once again need the wisdom of literature.

So - the next book is Rule 34 by Charles Stross, which we will be discussing at the Madlab on 18th Oct 7-9pm. Find Madlab at 36-40 Edge Street, M4 1HN.
You're more than welcome to come, it's free and informal and friendly! See you there? Oh and you can borrow a copy of Rule 34 from Madlab - books should arrive next week!

You can contact the book club on Twitter @mcrsf_madlab using #mcrsf and keep up to date with Manchester Sci-Fi book club posts at Madlab: http://madlab.org.uk/content/tag/mcrsf/

There's also a group on Google

Smut in the Suburbs!

 
The writing collective behind the popular Chorlton Arts Festival 2011 Flash Mob short story competition and spoken word evening plus regular performances at Bad Language, Manchester Literature Festival, Oxfam Bookfest, Twestival, Not Part Of and Bad Shoes Festival are back with a new event for Didsbury Arts Festival.

Smut Night takes place on Wednesday 28 September at 8pm at the Northern Lawn Tennis Club on Palatine Road in Didsbury and marks the launch of a brand-new anthology of stories on the theme of love and lust, Quickies: Stories For Adults. 

The collection includes pieces by the five FlashTag writers (Sarah-Clare Conlon, Fat Roland, Tom Mason, David Hartley and Benjamin Judge), 10 local authors specially commissioned for the project (including novelist Emma Jane Unsworth, whose debut Hungry, The Stars & Everything has just hit the shelves to critical acclaim), and 15 writers who were successful in the recent open submissions process (including Claire Massey, Sarah Hilary, Adrian Slatcher and Tania Hershman).

The night will feature readings by the contributors, including Bristol Prize-winner and Whalley Ranger Valerie O'Riordan; Didsbury author Socrates Adams, whose debut novel Everything's Fine is being launched at Manchester Literature Festival in October, and South Manchester-based Chris Killen, author of The Bird Room, described by The Guardian as "darkly comic" and by The Independent as "exciting and perfectly formed".

There will also be a special headline slot from David Gaffney, the reputed "grandmaster of flash fiction" (Bookmunch) and "one of the foremost writers in the short fiction arena" (The Short Review). He is the lauded author of three flash fiction collections, Sawn-off Tales, Aromabingo and The Half-life Of Songs, plus the novel Never Never, and he will be reading the story he has written especially for Quickies along with some of his other work. 

What a night!

FlashTag writer and organiser Sarah-Clare Conlon says: “I’ve been gagging to run a literary-based Smut Night for ages and this seemed like the ideal opportunity – I think an evening of tongue-in-cheek saucy and romantic stories in the curtain-twitching suburbs will go down a treat!”

See flashtagmcr.wordpress.com for more, with updates via Twitter @FlashTagMcr.

Taken from Life - Death in the Family Album

Taken from Life: Death in the Family Album

Victorian social history and photography of the dead - a talk by Audrey Linkman offering a fascinating and sensitive exploration of Victorian bereavement photography – a forgotten tradition which commemorated love and loss.

Audrey Linkman helped to found the renowned Documentary Photographic Archive, now housed at Greater Manchester County Record Office. She specialises in 19th century portrait photography and the Victorian family album. Her books include Photography and Death, recently published by Reaktion Books, and The Victorians: Photographic Portraits.

You can reserve these books for free from the library online catalogue.

Reservation is essential for this event as there is limited availability.
Contact Alison Gill for information and bookings on 0161 832 5284.

Thursday 6 October
6-8 pm

City Library
Becker Room, First Floor
Elliot House, 151 Deansgate
Manchester M3 3WD
Booking: 0161 832 5284
or archiveslocalstudies@manchester.gov.uk

Publishers & Authors: Do You Use SoundCloud?

Many authors and publishers take advantage of YouTube to promote their books. Now GalleyCat show you how publishers and authors are using online audio sites like SoundCloud to promote their books. SoundCloud is a platform where you can upload and share audio clips, from music to audiobook clips to recorded readings. The site has more than six million users sharing recordings every day... read more at GalleyCat.

You're invited to the Modernist Issue 2  special launch event at 6.00pm on Thursday 15th Sept 2011 at


ferrious

arch 61

Whitworth Street West

Manchester

M1 5WQ 


Issue 2 will be available to purchase - hot off the press! Tickets available here...


Come along for a spot of wine and a chance to win  ‘la Lune Sous Le Chapeau’ lamp, designed by Man Ray for his own desk in Paris in the 1930s, now re-issued by Cassina and generously provided by ferrious – it could be yours if you bob along on the 15th of September.


Don't forget the new course - Introduction to Contemporary Visual Arts: Modernism will be running from October at Cornerhouse - book your place here. 


The Manchester Room @ City Library subscribe to The Modernist .

Random Book Awards – A Longlist

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011 shortlist was announced on Tuesday 6th September 2011. The shortlisted titles are:


Julian Barnes - The Sense of Ending
Carol Birch -  Jamrach’s Menagerie
Esi Edugyan - Half Blood Blues
Stephen Kelman -  Pigeon English
A D Miller -  Snowdrops
Patrick deWitt -  The Sisters Brothers


Reserve books for free at the Manchester Library online catalogue...


In other literary award news, poet and author, Jackie Kay, has been awarded the 2011 Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book of the Year, in partnership with Creative Scotland, for her autobiography Red Dust Road. A fiction heavy Guardian First Book Award longlist has also been announced. 


I'm very excited by the Ned Kelly Awards for Australian Crime Writing. The winners were announced last week including The Diggers Rest Hotel by Geoffrey McGreachin (Viking) for best fiction and Prime Cut by Alan Carter (Fremantle Press) for first fiction prize. Want to know more? No worries, just check out the booksellerandpublisher.com.au or The Age.


There are at least 50 literary awards in the UK each year, ranging from the highly specialised – the Boardman Tasker prize for Mountain Literature, whose 2010 winner was Ron Fawcett autobiography Rock Athlete – to the general, such as the Costa awards, which cover five genres, culminating in the book of the year. Some, like the Booker, honour a particular book, while others, such as the David Cohen prize, are designed as tribute to a life's work.


Read more over at The Guardian.

Red Ceilings Press - New Chapbook Release

the little shed of various lamps by Nikolai Duffy
limited edition chapbook A6, 44pp, 40 copies
available from The Red Ceilings Press

Nikolai Duffy is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has published various essays on experimental writing practices, contemporary poetry, small press publishing, and sculpture. His poems have appeared in Stride Magazine; two sequences are forthcoming in E.ratio and Owt. He lives in Manchester. This is his first book, chap or otherwise.

Double short-listing for ‘The Peeps’

The Peeps - a fully-illustrated hard-back book that outlines the fortunes of Manchester’s industrial suburb of Ancoats - has been short-listed for two prestigious awards in the space of two months.


In July, the 144-page book was short-listed in the ‘Best of Photographic Books from the World’ at the Photography Festival in Arles, France. In August, meanwhile, the producers of the book (Manchester-based Axis Graphic Design) were notified that The Peeps had also been short-listed in the prestigious Roses Design Awards, organised by creative publication ‘The Drum’ to promote excellence in innovative design.


Bridging two worlds of art and urban regeneration, The Peeps tells the story of Ancoats through the eyes of artist Dan Dubowitz who was appointed artist for the regeneration of Ancoats in 2003. Ancoats was once unimaginably different. One of the world's earliest industrial suburbs, it was dark and dense, noisy, frenetic, violent and unhealthy. It was also vibrant and creative. It had a striking vapour, sound and feel. The area today has undergone a striking regeneration. New streets, pavements and civic spaces have been laid down. 


A series of installations, known as The Peeps, have been created for the area. Built into the fabric of the buildings, the brass peep holes offer a fleeting glimpse of a walled-in-space, a tunnel, a disused toilet, a bell tower, a gauge. Dan Dubowitz, records through photographs, interviews, commentary and contemporaneous tests, the recent past and the current regeneration of the suburb. It is a fascinating, beautifully illustrated and designed volume that eloquently depicts the common narrative of industrialisation, slow decay and rebirth.

Reserve a copy of  The Peeps from the Manchester Libraries online catalogue. It's free to reserve books and we'll email you when it's ready to collect. You can chose to collect the book from any Manchester Library and return it to any Manchester Library when you've finished! We also have a reference copy of The Peeps in the Manchester Room @ City Library so why not come in and pay us a visit...

Tomorrow: Celebrate the 200th issue of PN Review

Celebrate the 200th issue of the UK’s leading poetry magazine, PN Review, at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester on Thursday 8th September for wine, discussion and debate.
The evening will include:

Patrick McGuinness, PN Review contributor and Booker-prize longlisted author, lecturing on Donald Davie and the editing of PN Review.

The New Editors’ Forum: a discussion about poetry magazine publishing now and in the future. Chaired by John McAuliffe (Manchester Review) and featuring panel members Rory Waterman (New Walk magazine), Carol Rumens (the Guardian) and James Byrne (The Wolf). Followed by audience questions

Poetry reading by Tara Bergin and Jeffrey Wainwright.

Drinks at 5.30pm for 6pm lecture. Click here for more information about the venue.

PN Review is the outstanding poetry magazine of our time. Founded in 1976 as Poetry Nation by Michael Schmidt and Brian Cox at the University of Manchester, PN Review has appeared six times a year since 1981. The magazine is edited by Michael Schmidt; Donald Davie and C.H. Sisson were previously on the editorial board. Each issue includes an editorial, letters, news & notes, articles, interviews, features, poems, translations, and a substantial book review section. The complete PN Review digital archive was launched in January, a vast online resource spanning four decades of literary writing, accessible at www.pnreview.co.uk.

Important changes to Manchester Library Services

September sees a number of changes in libraries as a result of budget reductions.  Click here to find out more about changes to opening hours from September 5 and the closure of Rack House and Clayton Libraries later this month.

Do you recall pianist John Ogdon in his Manchester years?

We have received the following request from writer Charles Beauclerk. Can you help?

I’m writing a biography of the pianist John Ogdon (1937-89), to be published by Simon & Schuster in 2012, and was wondering if you would be willing to post the information below in case any readers knew him or his family?

John Andrew Howard Ogdon, 1937-1989

Can anyone recall John Ogdon in his Manchester years (1945-1962)? Born in Mansfield Woodhouse, Notts, it he and his family moved to Prestwich in 1945, when he was offered a scholarship by the Royal Manchester College of Music (at the tender age of eight!). From 1945 to 1955 the Ogdon family lived at 5 Mardale Close, Prestwich, and then from 1956 to 1964 at 77 Bury New Road, Besses o’th’Barn, Whitefield.

His parents were Howard and Dorothy Ogdon.  Howard, who was born in 1899, taught English at Stand Grammar School from 1945 to his death in 1962.  John Ogdon, who was their youngest son, attended Lady Wiltons Church of England Junior School in Simister, near Heaton Park from 1945 to 1947, and from there went on to Manchester Grammar School (1947-53).  He then returned to the Royal Manchester College of Music, as it was called, for a further five years, both as student and teacher.  He lived with his parents at 77 Bury New Road until his marriage to Brenda Lucas, a fellow student of the RMCM, in July 1960.
There were five children in all: Philippa (b.1923), Paul (b.1925), Ruth (b.1929), Karl (b.1930), and John (b.1937).

If you have have any information on John Ogdon or any of the Ogdon family during their Prestwich/Manchester years, please could they phone me on 01473 828943 or write to Charles Beauclerk, Benton Lodge, 125 Benton Street, Hadleigh, Suffolk. IP7 5AY, or email: c.beauclerk446@btinternet.com
Even the most trivial details can be of value!