Thursday, 27 June 2019 at 6:30 pm – Thursday, 27 June 2019 at 11:00 pm

Rewriting the North: Manchester, Fiction & Rewriting the Past

Date: Thursday, June 27, 2019

Time: 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM

Location: The Portico Library

Tickets: FREE - Available on Eventbrite

In 2019, the Portico Library will relaunch the Portico Prize: a major literary award celebrating contemporary writing that encapsulates ‘a sense of the North’. The Portico Library and the Centre for Place Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University have come together to organise, in the months leading up to the announcement of the Prize, ‘Rewriting the North’: a series of events celebrating writers and writing connected with the North of England. In each event, two leading writers will read from their work and will discuss the role that place plays in their creative practice. ‘Rewriting the North’, then, will explore the relationship between writing and place across a range of forms and genres. By extension, it will celebrate how such writers are rewriters are reimagining the North of England.

Rosie Garland writes long and short-form fiction, poetry and sings with post-punk band The Violets. Her most recent novel, The Night Brother, offers a ‘playful and exuberant’ reimagining of late nineteenth century Manchester that carries ‘echoes of Angela Carter’s more fantastical fiction’ (Nick Rennison, The Sunday Times). Rosie is currently the inaugural Writer-in-Residence at the John Rylands Library.

Livi Michael has written nineteen novels for people of all ages, many of which are rooted in the landscapes of north-west England. Her current projects include a novel about Elizabeth Gaskell (whose husband was the Chair of the Portico Library), a YA book set in central Manchester, and a play set in Oldham in 1701. Livi is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.