News | Monday, 28th October 2013

First Gothic Manchester festival hailed a spooky success

University-run event explores the dark side of academia

THE first Gothic Manchester festival culminated this weekend with a huge celebration of all things dark and interesting at Manchester Town Hall.

The event, which was organised by academics from MMU, featured everything from a zombie pub quiz and a lamplight tour of the Manchester Art gallery to academic discussions about Gothic television and music and readings by contemporary gothic writers.

More than 250 people attended a Gothic horror double bill at Cornerhouse run in association with the British Film Institute’s celebration of gothic in film and television.

And a gothic open day held on Saturday included talks on body gothic, female serial killers, vampires, steampunk and the ghost story, as well as creative writing workshops and the launch of the Gothic Flash Fictions competition.

A great success

Festival co-organiser Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes, Research Fellow in English at Manchester Metropolitan University, said: “The Gothic Manchester festival was a great success - from the sold-out zombie pub quiz, walking tours and lamp-lit visit to the Manchester Art Gallery, to the popular Gothic Open Day and the exciting finale with writers Ramsey Campbell, Conrad Williams and Stephen McGeagh. We even had people flying from Limerick to attend the celebrations on Friday night!”

Author Ramsey Campbell, described by the Oxford Companion to English Literature as “Britain’s most respected living horror writer”, was one of three authors to appear at a Twisted Tales event at the Anthony Burgess Foundation.

He said: “I thought it was a splendid evening with an attentive and enthusiastic audience, which is a good description of any Twisted Tales event. I imagine and certainly hope that the gothic will be popular as long as humanity has an imagination. When we lose that (which I'm prepared to believe will be never) we'll cease to be human.”

Dr Reyes added: “Gothic Manchester brought together people from all walks of life and helped us bring the work we do at MMU to a general non-specialist audience. We are overwhelmed by the incredibly positive response to the festival, particularly on Twitter, and very much hope to run it again next year.”

Gothic centre launch

The festival also marked the launch of the university’s Manchester centre for Gothic Studies.

The centre is the first of its kind in the country, and gives academics from a broad range of subjects including literature, psychology and science, the opportunity to work together to explore the intellectual dark side.

Festival co-organiser Dr Linnie Blake, director of the centre, said: “MMU is extremely unusual in having a large proportion of academics working on the Gothic - not just in English but in art and design and science and engineering too.

“The Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies will capitalise on this outstanding expertise to enable those who love the gothic to think about it more deeply and those that don't to think again. To us, studying the gothic is an intellectual adventure on the dark side and we want to share this not only with other academics but also with members of the wider world.”

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