Literary event highlights in the North: June 2016
There's something for everyone in this month's roundup of literary events and readings across the North – whether you're interested in the backstreets of Victorian Manchester, internet poetry or body-positive activism.
The Children's Book Festival returns
The main event this month has to be the 2016 Manchester Children’s Book Festival. The main event – the family fun day – takes place on 25 June at Manchester Metropolitan University, with a full day of storytelling, film-making, dressing up, and arts and crafts. Running from 24 June to 3 July, the festival line-up has something for youngsters and the slightly older among us alike, and there are a number of pre-festival events taking place across the city too.
Manchester's history explored
For history lovers, Dean Kirby’s Angel Meadow: Victorian Britain’s Most Savage Slum could be right up your alley. Angel Meadow is a part of Manchester’s fascinating history of horrific Victorian slums, with their prostitutes and criminals, ragged schools and mass graves, described by Friedrich Engels as ‘Hell upon Earth.’ Mancunian journalist Dean Kirby will be reading from, and discussing, his book at the Portico Library on 13 June.
Poetry and prose in Manchester
The Other Room, the Castle Hotel's monthly avant-garde poetry night, has a very special guest this month: Sam Riviere, whose Internet-influenced debut collection 81 Austerities won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2012. He will be joined by fellow poets Martin Palmer and Sarah Kelly on 23 June, so make sure to coordinate it with your EU referendum vote! With his bone-dry poems, Riviere is a fitting reader for an evening that might deepen our Conservative nightmare.
Speaking of Europe, our final highlight in Manchester this month is more optimistic: the arrival of Reading Europe, a promotion by 16 of the UK's independent publishers bringing together 49 novels from EU countries in support of the Remain cause. The International Anthony Burgess Foundation will host the last event of Reading Europe's tour on 20 June, pairing Italian novelist Diego Marani with local authors to explore the fun and variety of European literature.
Strong messages on the Mersey
At the Bluecoat, Liverpool on 17 June, DaDaFest and the University of Liverpool present a book launch by Charlotte Cooper, the author, psychotherapist and founding advocate of Fat Studies. Cooper's book Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement examines the history of fat activism, offering an encouraging outlook for supporters of body positivity everywhere.
Those interested in Liverpool's music history might want to check out local author Anthony Hogan in Stanley Park on 26 June. Hogan's new book From a Storm to a Hurricane explores the heartbreaking story of Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, a Liverpool band who were contemporaries of the Beatles in the late 50s and early 60s before they drifted into obscurity and, eventually, tragedy. Hogan will be discussing his book at the North Liverpool Music Festival joined by Storm's sister and ex-band members.
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Special events from Writing on the Wall
On 17 and 21 June at Liverpool Exhibition Centre, lit organisation Writing on the Wall present a series of specially commissioned free sessions as part of the International Business Festival, bringing together best-selling authors, publishers, computer game producers and scientists to reflect on the future of writing as a business. The pick of the workshops, From Sci-fi to Real life – True Fiction on 21 June, will draw together literature and science lecturers from Liverpool's universities to look at how science and sci-fi have influenced each other.
A Salford legend in Liverpool
Last but certainly not least, on 11 June, the wonderfully entertaining John Cooper Clarke will be rhyming his way through life and politics at the Liverpool Guild of Students. Expect a raucous night full of quick-fire quippery from one of Salford's finest sons.
Big debate in Leeds
Although The Leeds Big Bookend has been and gone this month, the Bookend team aren't resting on their laurels. For the third year running they're hosting the Index on Censorship Big Debate at the Carriageworks Theatre on 14 June. This year's debate will see journalists and fiction writers go head to head to argue over whose work has a stronger impact. Panellists will include author Anthony Clavane; Rachel Jolley, editor of Index on Censorship magazine and Chris Bond, assistant features editor at the Yorkshire Post. Take a helmet; it could be a feisty one.
Award-winning poetry at the Word Club
Led by local writer Mark Connors, monthly Leeds lit night Word Club at The Chemic Tavern looks like it has a good one in store on 24 June, headlined by poet Patrick Lodge, who was the winner of the 2015 Blackwater International Poetry Competition. Joining him is Leeds Beckett University lecturer Nasser Hussein (not the cricketer). There will also be one mystery headliner pulled out of a hat. You can't argue with a night as egalitarian as that.
Literary highlights at Hebden Bridge Arts Festival
Finally, with Ilkley Lit Fest a few months off yet, Yorkshire-based lit revellers are encouraged to head to Hebden Bridge Arts Festival. In aid of an area often at risk from flooding, one of Yorkshire's finest writers, Simon Armitage, will be reading poems based on rain and water at the Ted Hughes Theatre, in neighbouring Mytholmroyd (27 June). The month will be capped off at Hebden Bridge Town Hall on 30 June by American historical novelist Tracy Chevalier, who will speak about her experience of editing Reader, I Married Him, a new collection of short stories based on Jane Eyre.
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