Our school has a strong Manchester presence, with links to many of the city’s major cultural and arts organisations, and also a global reach with students and alumni based across the UK and continental Europe, and in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Australasia. We play a leading role in establishing Manchester as a city of writers with a commitment to finding diverse new voices and creating opportunities for writer development, enabling new writing and building audiences for the next generation of talent. Manchester has been designated a UNESCO City of Literature in recognition of its thriving live literature scene, with a year-round programme of author events, writers’ forums, networking opportunities and open mic nights.
Our annual Manchester Writing Competition seeks to celebrate Manchester as an international city of writers, finding and celebrating diverse new voices from around the world and creating opportunities for writer development. The competition has awarded more than £195,000 to writers. We also run the Quiet Man Dave Prize, which celebrates short-form writing and the life of someone who loved to experience new places, art and events and write about them.
We also work closely with Manchester Metropolitan’s Manchester Poetry Library which hosts an extensive collection of contemporary poetry books and recordings in multiple languages, and is an exciting public venue for a whole range of literary and arts events and projects, including book launches and author panels. We are home to a suite of ambitious outreach projects including the Manchester Children’s Book Festival and Mother Tongue Other Tongue, an international multilingual poetry competition that celebrates cultural diversity and the many languages spoken in schools in the UK.
The Manchester Writing School offers opportunities to study at BA, Masters and PhD level. Find out more on our Courses page.