This year’s line up includes Jimmy McGovern, Simon Armitage, Fay Weldon, Ruth Padel, Joan Bakewell, Nick Laird, MJ Hyland, Catherine O’Flynn, Marilyn Hacker and hundreds of others. There loads of great events happening across the city, you’ll need to take a peek at their website for more info on what’s happening where.

On Monday 19^th October at Matt and Phred’s Jazz Bar I will be reading with Cumbrian poet Jacob Polley and Matthew Welton as part of Chris Killen’s No Point Not Being Friends night in the Northern Quarter.

There are more details here: http://manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk/09-programme/october-19/no-point-not-being-friends/

This will be the first time I have read my poems to a northern audience so I hope I don’t get too nervous beforehand. It will be great to hear them sing ‘In Tadcaster’ at me in original pronunciation. .

I’ll be reading poems from my new collection Cigarettes in Bed which will be coming out on Blackheath Books in winter time. Plus some other floor fillers from the Brutalist backlist. No hot pants scheduled for this performance though, I’ve got my graduation ceremony in London on the same day so it will be a transatlantic dash. Or something of that equivalent on Virgin Trains.

I know it’s a school night but if anybody out there fancies it I’d most appreciative of a northern chorus!

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