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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

🎟️ Tickets are now on general sale for our Spring & Summer events with Tayari Jones, Douglas Stuart, Satoshi Yagisawa & Emi Yagi🎉 Get your tickets here: manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk/whats-on 🎟️

manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk

Whats On | Manchester Literature Festival

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

🪢Follow the journey of Vernice and Annie as their lives divert and converge in segregated America. Come see Tayari Jones discuss mothers and daughters, lifelong friendship and the truths that shape us. 📅7pm, Tue 2 Jun 📍Central Library 🎟️ manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk/events/tayar...

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

⛴️ A warm welcome back to Douglas! Tender, immersive and unflinching, John of John explores the weight of family expectation, the compromises demanded by love and the devastating cost of lives constrained by silence. 📅7pm, Tue 23 May 📍Contact 🎟️ manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk/events/dougl...

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

🇯🇵 A celebration of contemporary Japanese fiction, this special event brings together two extraordinary writers; Satoshi Yagisawa and Emi Yagi as they discuss storytelling, love and loneliness. 📅7pm, Sat 14 Mar 📍Central Library Manchester 🎟️ manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk/events/satos...

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Announcing our Spring & Summer events with Satoshi Yagisawa & Emi Yagi, Douglas Stuart, and Tayari Jones! Advance tickets for these events are now available for MLF Members to buy. Tickets go on general sale on Fri 6 Feb. Can't wait? Get your membership here: www.quaytickets.com/mlf/screenlo...

quaytickets.com

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

Manifesting sunnier days to come.. with our Spring/Summer events!☀️ Next week, we can finally share with you our first events for 2026. Here are some hints for the books: can you guess who might be coming? 1. 👧🪢👧 2. 🏛️🔐🗿❤️🧍‍♀️ 3. 📚🚲🐈 4. 🌊🌧️⛅️⛵️🫂

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Reposted by Manchester Literature Festival

Becca Parkinson @beccap1502.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

@mcrlitfest.bsky.social are recruiting for new Trustees, join me on the Board of this brilliant organisation! Find out more on our website: manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk/get-involved...

manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk

Get Involved | Manchester Literature Festival

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

We end with Jeanette’s response to how we hold onto our imagination even as we grow up. Thank you for joining us for your regular culture fix🥰

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

With Oranges, Jeanette says she wanted to make an avatar of herself. She wanted to be free, untrapped, unbound. “It wasn’t just a way to get out of Accrington, but also to live a bigger life,” she says. This is why the arts is a lifeline for everyone, and why we should fight for it.

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

This book was written while Jeanette was going through losses of loved ones and personal health issues. What helped push through was her wanting to take stock and get behind what she wants to campaign for. This book is a labour of love as well as a testament to her resilience.

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

History is a collection of found objects that got washed away by the tide; so find the magic in the moment instead of having an end goal, she says. Jeanette is, and has always been, a firm believer of creativity as an incremental process, not a singular event.

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

40 years of telling stories - and this time, she goes meta, telling us about storytelling. We start with a reading from her new non-fictiom book, One Aladdin Two Lamps:

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

In true Jeanette Winterson fashion, we have this onstage instead of the usual chairs‼️ How will she make her entrance tonight?👀

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

Loved the Festival? Went home with a book or two? As a publicly-funded organisation, we always appreciate whatever feedback our audience has for us. Please visit the link below🔗 to fill out a short survey (it won’t take more than 5 minutes)! uk.culturecounts.cc/s/2983Gi/spl...

uk.culturecounts.cc

Culture Counts Survey

A platform for cultural measurement. Tell a better story about your impact and value.

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

1. Come see one of our favourite Mancunians, Jeanette Winterson, talk about her new book, One Aladdin and Two Lamps, a bold, brilliant celebration of the power of storytelling and a radical look at the future. 🗓️ 7pm, Tue 11 Nov 📍 RNCM 🎟️ manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk/events/jeane...

manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk

Jeanette Winterson | Manchester Literature Festival

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

Hello everyone hope you’ve had a nice week👋 We’re popping into your feed for 2 important reminders!

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Great audience questions including where Zadie draws inspiration instead of doomscrolling, how she reckons with her own fame and power while she advocates so hard for the powerless, and the art of crafting perfect sentences. Thank you for coming!

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Zadie is not immune to the looming threat of the environment disaster and confesses of despairing. She feels as if the average person does what they can within their power; however, when there are actors who are actively causing harm, how are we to fight it?

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

About our lives online, and the paradigm shift happening to the entire global population:

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Katie describes the structure Zadie’s essay collection as quasi-religious, and Zadie agrees. She describes it as a confession, and that she puts everything on the line.

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

What drew Zadie to write about the visual arts? It was having children, she replies. “Telly was my visual art when I was growing up,” she says with a chuckle. But when she went to the Whitney Museum holding her child, she realised it was one of the spaces where she could still feel like herself.

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Zadie opens her new essay collection with an idea of hospitality, and a reflection on our freedom in this age of algorithms. She tells Katie that she thinks of her writing as opening the door for someone; it’s an invitation for people to come in, and she’s welcoming them inside.

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Here we are with RNCM with Zadie Smith & our host Katie Popperwell!

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Last 30 tickets for Zadie Smith available at RNCM Box Office from 6.30pm tonight! Head down there if you haven’t managed to get a ticket online. See you in a few👋

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

Can’t believe October is already nearly over! Please spare a few minutes to tell us what you think by completing our audience survey, which helps us learn more about you and how we can make things better for next time. Any input is truly welcome! uk.culturecounts.cc/s/2983Gi/spl...

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Reposted by Manchester Literature Festival

Becca Parkinson @beccap1502.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

A brilliant closing event for @mcrlitfest.bsky.social’s 20th anniversary festival listening to lovely Patrick Grant talk about his book Less, and I got my copy signed too ✍🏼

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

We finish the night with Patrick’s vision for Community Clothing in 20 years. Thank you so much for coming and contributing to such an important conversation♥️🥼

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

Again brilliant audience qs including who should be held accountable for the fast fashion industry, how to maintain a sustainable business similar to that of Patrick’s model, and his views on the booming secondhand clothing indistry.

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

Now, everyone produces “fashion”. The market and the system is too big for the practical needs of the average person. Every year, 30 billion items that are produced are never even sold. Despite this, more and more money gets invested into the industry, raising profit and turnover targets even more.

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

In the past, there were clothes, and there was fashion. Clothes were items we kept for a long time - the everyday, mundane stuff, an item perfected for everyday wear to last for a long time. Fashion was the “fun stuff”, the newness, the items you would save up for 6 months to triumphantly get.

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

Patrick is a big believer of shopping small and supporting the local economy. Globalisation of retail has led to our money going somewhere else other than our neighbours and local workers. What’s the point of a high GDP if it brings no value for most of the population? He asks.

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

Who do you want your money to go to? He asks the audience. Most people would prefer to pay garment workers directly and get a quality item of clothing that lasts in exchange. There’s no need for companies to spend millions on marketing budget if they were to follow consumer needs, he says.

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

With textile mills going empty and tens of thousands of garment workers losing their jobs, and hyper-consumption completely changing the landscape of fashion, Patrick thought it was time to change the model. If garments are made to last, more people would be paid fairly and the waste would be less.

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

A little backstory on how Patrick started business in community clothing:

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

Last event of the month: Patrick Grant with us at HOME tonight🪡👚👖👔

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

Last few tickets left! manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk/whats-on%F0%...

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 25/10/2025

manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk/whats-on

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

Great audience qs as always, including how to get over the intimidation that can come with nature writing and advice on how to engage with landscapes that you’re connected to by ancestral heritage. Thank you for coming!

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

The poetry publishing landscape has changed quite a bit thanks to the work of pioneering Global Majority workers in the industry. There’s still room for improvement, however - we can’t wait another 15 years for another anthology by entirely Global Majority writers.

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

This space for Global Majority writers is hugely missing from the nature writing section in the bookstore. Karen references the “aestheticised gaze”; country houses, mahogany furnitures and so on. One could argue this is the elitist, colonised way of looking at nature, they all say.

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

The anthology is broken up into four parts; earth, water, wind and fire. Our host John Siddique notes that for many Global Majority people, there’s a 5th element; space. The space to be exist, the space to be in nature, the space to be present.

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

Last but not least - Jerwood Prize for Poetry 2025 winner Karen McCarthy Woolf (together with the audience):

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

Followed by poet and human rights lawyer Mona Arshi:

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

We start with a reading by T.S. Eliot Prize winner Roger Robinson:

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

WriterMosaic, poetry, and nature writing🌿 at the Central Library tonight! Excited to hear from Mona Arshi, Karen McCarthy Woolf & Roger Robinson tonight☺️

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

Last weekend of the festival! Grab your tickets🎟️ manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk/events/write...

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Manchester Literature Festival @mcrlitfest.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

Over at John Rylands Library, we have THE Mimi Khalvati delivering the annual Rylands Poetry Reading🥰

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