Tell Me On A Sunday
5 months ago
by Birmingham Book Festival
in News
Tell Me On A Sunday will return in January 2013 with a new series of the popular story-telling evening, but this time as part of Writing West Midlands.
Still at the Ikon Gallery and curated by the fabulous Cat Weatherill, the first episode will take place on Sunday 27 January 2013 with a theme of ‘City Living‘, and for the first time ever you can take part in a Tell Me On A Sunday workshop!
‘Tell Me… Where To Begin?’ is a free and practical introductory workshop for anyone considering sharing a story in Series 2 of Tell Me On A Sunday. It will take place on Sunday 13 January 2013, 2-5pm at Ikon. More information including how to book can be found on the Writing West Midlands website.
As usual, the Story Supper will be available from 5pm in the Cafe Ikon from a special menu, and the story-telling will begin at 6pm.
Dates and themes are:
City Living, Sunday 27 January 2013 @ Ikon
Strange Encounters, Sunday 17 February 2013 @ Ikon
Little Me, Sunday 17 March 2013 @ Ikon
Fur & Fin, Sunday 14 April 2013 @ Ikon
It’s all over for another year!
7 months ago
by Birmingham Book Festival
in News
After a busy but very exciting couple of weeks, the Festival is over. We had writing workshops, poetry and storytelling, an incredible one-off transmedia installation, art, European literature, a talk in the cathedral, a launch party and a closing party, and much more in between. Whilst we are busy reading what you thought about it all and sifting through the many many photographs, please have a look at some of the reviews we’ve already had!
Launch Party by UoB Blogfest, and by Birmingham Book Festival Volunteer
Caitlin Moran and Stuart Maconie by UoB Blogfest, and by Birmingham Book Festival Volunteer
Please do keep them coming!
You can also view photographs from the Festival events here.
Starting as we mean to go on…. The Launch Party
7 months ago
by Birmingham Book Festival
in News
Thank you to everyone who came to our Launch Party last night, we had a brilliant time and hope you did too. We saw a side-splitting set from the wonderful Elvis McGonagall and found out that Birmingham’s new Poet Laureate for 2012/2013 is the very talented Stephen Morrison-Burke.
Here are some photographs from the evening:
More to come later!
Click here to read Festival volunteer Marc Pearson’s blog post about the event.
Birmingham Book Festival Video Interviews
8 months ago
by Birmingham Book Festival
in News
In the lead up to 2012′s Birmingham Book Festival, we thought we’d give you a little taste of what’s to come, and who better to hear it from than those who are directly involved?
You can view the Festival’s promotional promotional video here. Also, watch an interview with the Festival Director, Sara Beadle, here.
What do you think? Join the discussion on twitter: @bhambookfest #bhambookfest2012
Kindly filmed by Boilerhouse Web TV on behalf of The Information Daily.
LouDeemY Productions Creative Writing Workshop
8 months ago
by Birmingham Book Festival
in News
Wednesday 10 October
Lower Ground Floor, Central Library, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham, B3 3HQ
1 – 3pm
Want to write? Think you can’t? Let us let you into a little secret; you can! Anyone who has ever had a thought can write, so come along and unleash your inner writer with us. LouDeemY Productions will be facilitating two free fun and exciting creative writing workshops for new writers. Participants will be guided through a range of imaginative and easy to follow creative techniques and exercises which will help them create their own pieces of writing during the workshops.
The workshop is free but please book to avoid disappointment by calling the BOX on 0121 245 4455 or by clicking here.
The Poetry of Plays with David Edgar
9 months ago
Wednesday 10 October, 7 – 8.15pm
Lecture Theatre, The Muirhead Tower, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston,
Birmingham, B15 2TT
£8 / £5
In this session, playwright David Edgar will show how drama shares many of the elements and structures of poetry. This is because both forms are written to be spoken, as well as being designed to be consumed at a single bite.
Illustrating his session by actors’ readings from classical and modern plays as well as clips from films and television drama, David Edgar will show how how plays communicate meaning by the technique – familiar to poets – of drawing unexpected connections between different elements. Plays as a whole have a common, underlying shape which owes more to the metaphorical character of the poem than the literalism of the novel. This is partly because the key events in so many plays take place in a metaphorical space.
So, as well as containing poetry (from the Greek chorus via Shakespearian blank verse to the bleak imagery of Samuel Beckett), great plays are poems in themselves.
David Edgar is one of Britain’s leading playwrights, who has written extensively for the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and many other theatres. His best known work includes Destiny, Pentecost and a multi-award-winning adaptation of Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby. His play about the making of the King James Bible – Written on the Heart – opened at Stratford last October. Founder of Britain’s first full-time university playwriting course (at Birmingham in 1989) his session draws on his hugely successful book about playwriting, How Plays Work, published by Nick Hern Books in 2009.
Presented in partnership with the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain.
To book please call the BOX on 0121 245 4455 or click here.
Words into Movement: Inspired by Tagore
9 months ago
Wednesday 10 October, 7 – 8.30pm
Foyle Studio, MAC, Cannon Hill Park, Birmingham B12 9QH
£6 / £4
South Asian classical and contemporary dance performances with readings of selected poems/stories.
The dancers in this performance will take their inspiration from a selection of stories and poetry in the books Journeys and Inspired by Tagore, published by sampad in partnership with British Council India. These writings are the result of two international competitions, with entries from across the UK and around the globe.
Piali Ray, director of sampad said: ‘These exciting competitions connected us with over 1500 writers from 37 countries and we were extremely impressed with the quality, passion and zeal of the entries. ‘sampad continually strives to profile creative people and the Journeys book is an excellent way to bring these talented writers to public attention. The project also adds to our international work developing intercultural dialogues across communities.’
To book please go to mac Box Office by clicking here or call them on 0121 446 3260.
Ray Tallis: In Defence of Wonder
9 months ago
Wednesday 10 October, 7 – 8.30pm
Waterstones New Street, 128 New Street Birmingham B2 4DB
£8 / £5
Ray Tallis is Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Manchester. He has advised the government on health care of older people and has written over 200 research publications in the neurology of old age and neurological rehabilitation. In 2000 he was elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He is the recipient of The Dhole Eddlestone Prize; the Founders Medal of the British Geriatrics Society; the Lord Cohen Gold Medal for Research into Ageing. He is also Chair of Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying.
In his writing life, Ray has published fiction (a novel and short stories), three volumes of poetry, and 22 books on the philosophy of mind, philosophical anthropology, literary theory, the nature of art, and cultural criticism. These offer a critique of current predominant intellectual trends and an alternative understanding of human consciousness, the nature of language and of what it is to be a human being. For this he has been awarded two honorary degrees: DLitt (Hon Causa) University of Hull, 1997; and LittD (Hon Causa) University of Manchester 2002. In 2009, the Economist Intelligent Life Magazine listed Tallis as one of the world’s 20 leading polymaths.
Ray is a frequent broadcaster, with appearances on Start the Week, Nightwaves, Inside the Ethics Committee and The Moral Maze. In Defence of Wonder and Other Philosophical Reflections is a collection of lively and provocative essays in which he debunks commonplace truths and takes to task much of contemporary science and philosophy, arguing that they are guilty of taking us down ever narrowing conduits of problem solving that only invite ever more complex responses and in doing so have lost sight of “wonder” – the metaphysical intoxication that first gave birth to philosophy 2,500 years ago.
Wonder is the proper state of humankind, and as these essays show, it has no more forceful a champion than Raymond Tallis. Come along and fill up.
Supported by Waterstones.
To book please call the BOX on 0121 245 4455 or click here.
Check out our interview with Ray Tallis in association with The Information Daily.
LouDeemY Productions Creative Writing Workshop
9 months ago
Monday 8 October
Lower Ground Floor, Central Library, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham, B3 3HQ
10.30am – 12.30pm
Want to write? Think you can’t? Let us let you into a little secret; you can! Anyone who has ever had a thought can write, so come along and unleash your inner writer with us. LouDeemY Productions will be facilitating two free fun and exciting creative writing workshops for new writers. Participants will be guided through a range of imaginative and easy to follow creative techniques and exercises which will help them create their own pieces of writing during the workshops.
The workshop is free but please book to avoid disappointment by calling the BOX on 0121 245 4455 or by clicking here.
Writers Without Borders: Independence Party
9 months ago
Tuesday 9 October, 7.30 – 9pm
Library Theatre, Central Library, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham B33HQ
Free but please book
Members of Birmingham’s Writers Without Borders group invite you to celebrate independence in a lively evening of performance: an ‘Independence Party’
Writers Without Borders is a Birmingham based group of writers from a variety of cultural backgrounds. Some have lived in England for many years and others have arrived in the country quite recently. The group includes professional, semi-professional , new and emerging writers and meets monthly at Stageside Bar and Restaurant, Birmingham, to share their work.
The group has published a number of anthologies of poetry and prose, and regularly takes part in live events in Birmingham. They are a regular (and always popular) event at the Festival and we are delighted to welcome them back in 2012.
Members of the group will perform original writing around the theme of independence.
Expect lively sets of spoken word, poetry, drama, dance and music at this free event. What better way to warm up achilly Monday evening?
Supported by Birmingham Libraries.
To book please call the BOX on 0121 245 4455 or click here.
The World According to Moran & Maconie – SOLD OUT
9 months ago
Tuesday 9 October, 7 – 8.30pm
CBSO Centre, Berkley Street, (Off Broad Street) Birmingham, B1 2LF
£10 / £6
We are sorry this event has now sold out.
Caitlin Moran grew up in Wolverhampton. Her feminist handbook for modern times, How To Be A Woman, won the Galaxy Book of the Year Award 2011 and set the record straight on a number of important issues. Her new collection of writing, Moranthology, sets Caitlin free to talk about just about everything else. It proves that she is no slouch when it comes to wrestling with cultural, social and political issues, including ‘The Big Society’, Big Hair, The Welfare State, caravans, Doctor Who, binge-drinking, Downton Abbey, pandas, library closures and poverty (so, something for everyone, then…).
And if this level of top-rank wisdom wasn’t enough, we are delighted to welcome back to the Festival polymath, Birmingham resident and all round good bloke Stuart Maconie, a Patron of Writing West Midlands but more importantly author of brilliant books about our life and times, including Hope and Glory: A People’s History of Modern Britain and Pies & Prejudice.
Together, Caitlin and Stuart will talk about important stuff and manage to be high-minded and frivolous in equal measure. How to be a Woman and Moranthology by Caitlin Moran and Hope and Glory, Adventures on the High Teas, Pies & Prejudice and Cider with Roadies by Stuart Maconie will all be on sale at this event and at the Festival Pop-up Bookshop throughout the Birmingham Book Festival.
Supported by the new Library of Birmingham.
Tanya Byrne and Louisa Reid
9 months ago
Tuesday 9 October
Lower Ground Floor, Central Library, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham, B3 3HQ
5.30pm
Meet two debut writers whose books explore the dark side of human nature. Tanya Byrne is the author of Heart-Shaped Bruise, a compelling and heartbreaking story about identity and how far a person might go to seek revenge. Louisa Reid is the author of Black Heart Blue, a powerful novel about the domestic horrors that unfold in a small community.
Admission is free but please book by calling the BOX on 0121 245 4455 or by clicking here.
City of 1000 Stories opens
9 months ago
City of 1000 Stories: built by Birmingham Metropolitan College and you!
The Festival Pop-Up Bookshop, Birmingham Central Library Foyer, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham B3 3HQ
You can take part in this installation on the dates and times:
2 October- 2pm – 6pm
3 October- 10am – 6pm
4 October- 2pm – 6pm
6 October- 10am – 2pm
9 October- 10am – 6pm
10 October- 2pm – 6pm
11 October- 10am – 4pm
13 October- 10am – 4pm
Birmingham Metropolitan College Outline Department invites you to participate in an exciting new project called City of 1000 Stories. Tell your story through words and images using simple mark making, drawing techniques and adding your contribution to the flying pages of The Book of Birmingham installation in the Festival Bookshop (library foyer). Spend some time or simply “drop in “for a moment to add your “visual voice” to the many fragments of the story of Birmingham. Join us, let your story be part of the installation, be creative and make your mark!
http://cityof1000stories.blogspot.co.uk/
No booking required – just drop in!
Festival Pop-Up Bookshop 2012
9 months ago
Birmingham Central Library Foyer, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham, B3 3HQ
Open Tuesday 2 October – Saturday 13 October
Opening times: 10am – 5.30pm weekdays, 9am – 4.30pm Saturdays, closed Sundays.
Our pop-up bookshop returns this year in the foyer of Birmingham Central Library! Here you can buy books from Festival authors- at great prices, pick up a Festival mug, bag or postcards, you can also contribute your story to City of 1000 Stories’The Book of Birmingham- an interactive, visual display and see some free Festival Fringe events!
The Festival team will be on hand to answer any questions that you might have about the events. Join us daily to chill out in the ‘hub’ of the Festival or before you head off to one of our events.
We look forward to seeing you there!
Festival Launch
9 months ago
Thursday 4 October, 6 – 8pm
Yumm Café, Zellig (The Custard Factory), Gibb Street, Digbeth, Birmingham, B9 4AA
Free, please book to avoid disappointment
Birmingham Book Festival, Birmingham Poet Laureate 2012/13 & National Poetry Day
Special Guest: Elvis McGonagall – One Man & his doggerel!
Join us as we launch the fourteenth Birmingham Book Festival, celebrate National Poetry Day and announce the new Birmingham Poet Laureate 2012/13.
Writing West Midlands’ Programmes Director, Sara Beadle, will say a few words to introduce the Festival and some of the wonderful events to come over the next ten days. Festival staff and volunteers will also be on hand to tell you more and to answer any questions.
The annual Birmingham Poet Laureate programme is run by Birmingham Libraries. Each year a new Laureate is appointed to encourage local people to get involved in poetry. This year’s contenders have been through a rigorous selection process and we wait with anticipation the announcement of the winning poet. To lighten the tension, the out-going Birmingham Poet Laureate, Jan Watts, will be hand to perform alongside the new Laureate, handing over the honorary title with some choice wit and wisdom.
And to round off our evening’s celebration who better than Elvis McGonagall, stand-up poet, armchair revolutionary and recumbent rocker! Elvis, we are told, is the sole resident of The Graceland Caravan Park somewhere near Dundee, where he scribbles verse whilst drinking malt whisky and listening to Johnny Cash. He is also a former World Slam Champion, compere of the notorious Blue Suede Sporran Club and is one of the poets occasionally in residence on BBC Radio 4’s “Saturday Live”. Oh, and he is very, very funny!
The Emergency Poet – The World’s First & Only Mobile Poetic First Aid Service
‘Between the Fountains and the Green Man’, The Custard Factory, Gibb Street, Digbeth, Birmingham, B9 4AA
1 – 6pm. Free, drop in!
As a service to the City of Birmingham, we present the Emergency Poet – a vintage 1960s ambulance in which ‘Dr’
Deborah Alma can minister to the poetic needs of all and sundry. No appointment necessary, simply drop by if you’d like the ‘Dr’ to offer an up-lifting couplet or a life-enhancing stanza or two. Free at the point of demand and unaffected by NHS reforms, let our highly trained medic use the latest diagnostic techniques to prescribe just the write (ha, ha!) poem. Why feel worse? Take Verse!
To book please call the BOX on 0121 245 4455 or click here.
Poetry Brunch with Birmingham Poet Laureate 2011/2012 Jan Watts
9 months ago
Thursday 4 October
Festival Bookshop, Central Library, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham, B3 3HQ
11am-1pm
Meet the poets who have been shortlisted to take over as Birmingham’s Poet Laureate 2012/2013. With coffee and croissants!
Admission is free, just drop in.
Meet Birmingham’s Poet Laureate 2012/2013
9 months ago
Thursday 11 October
Festival Bookshop, Birmingham Central Library Foyer, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham, B3 3HQ
5 – 6pm
Meet the city’s new Poet Laureate and find out what they’ve got planned for the year ahead.
Admission is free, just drop in.
Jackie Kay: Reality, Reality
9 months ago
Thursday 11 October 2012, 7.30 – 9pm.
Birmingham Cathedral, Colmore Row, Birmingham, B3 2QB
£10 / £6
Sponsored by Newman University College, Birmingham.
In fifteen extraordinary stories, Jackie Kay celebrates the richness and power of dream-life to inspire, to repair, and to make real.The wonderful novelist and poet Jackie Kay is also a brilliant writer of short stories. Her new collection of stories, Reality, Reality, plays with the theme of reality, but also focuses on the lives of real people, often those who go unnoticed, who are coping with loss, desperation or delusion. Heart-breaking but at turns laugh-out-loud funny, these are interior monologues that show Jackie’s extraordinary ear for how we speak and what we really mean.
Jackie Kay will give our second annual ‘address from the pulpit’ in Birmingham Cathedral, following Will Self’s engaging homily on walking last year. She will read some of the fifteen stories from Reality, Reality, and offer her own commentary on the points where the physicality of our lives blurs into an alternative reality and sometimes into a new awakening or spirituality.
Jackie was born in Glasgow. She has published novels, collections of poetry and short stories and memoir. In 2006 she was awarded an MBE for services to literature. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University. Her poems have appeared in many anthologies, and she has written widely for stage and television.
The evening will be introduced by Dean Catherine Ogle of Birmingham Cathedral, and chaired by Jonathan Davidson, Chief Executive of Writing West Midlands.
To book please call the BOX on 0121 245 4455 or click here.
In Ramallah, Running: Exploring Palestine
9 months ago
Thursday 11 October, 6.30-7.30pm
Ikon Gallery, 1 Oozells Square, Birmingham, B1 2HS
FREE but please book by calling the Ikon Gallery on 0121 248 0708 – we apologise that this detail is missing from the Festival brochure.
Ikon hosts the launch of In Ramallah, Running, Guy Mannes-Abbott’s uniquely personal encounter with Palestine which interweaves short, poetic texts with exploratory essays.
Located in Israel, the State of Palestine is the region between the Mediterranean sea and the Jordan River, it includes the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Palestine is recognised today by approximately two-thirds of the world’s countries, although this status is not recognized by the United Nations, Israel and some Western nations such as the United States.
In Ramallah, Running consists of 14 parts, which alternate Guy’s journey running within the limits of the city and walking out from it, along, beyond and off limits, discovering the limits of those who are under Occupation in Palestine – as there is currently a wall sectioning off those who live in occupied Palestinian areas from the rest of Israel. Guy Mannes-Abbott’s texts generate a very special intimacy with a rarely seen or experienced Palestine.
International artists and prominent writers have responded to the texts in the books with newly commissioned work including paintings by Francis Alys, drawings by Paul Noble and a photography based project by Mark Titchner.
Described in the introduction as a ‘set of palpable explorations in and around the hills of Ramallah transformed into a text and then remobilised as dialogue with a variety of artists responses’, it produces the ‘exceptional sense of being drawn into the interior of a place known primarily by the external pressures exerted against it.’ Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti described it as ‘a cunning simplicity of writing the complexity of today’s Palestine, through the alleys, roads, streets, hills, valleys, days and evenings in and around Ramallah, charged me with love of the art of writing, of Palestine.’
Guy Mannes-Abbott is the author of a singular series of texts—poems, stories, aphorisms—called e.things which have been exhibited, published and performed alongside the work of leading British artists since 1997. In Ramallah, Running is the longest and latest in this series of texts and projects. He has been a tutor in architectural theory at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London and published in specialist journals. Critical journalism spanning literature and visual art has appeared in the New Statesman, Guardian, Harpers & Queen, Bidoun and The Independent.
In this free event, Guy will be in conversation with Samar Martha who is the Director of ArtSchool Palestine and there will be a reading followed by a book signing.
Places are free but should be reserved by calling the Ikon Gallery on 0121 248 0708.
Art and Writing: The City
9 months ago
Thursday 11 October, 6.30 – 8.30pm
The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TS
£5
Join us for a compelling evening of live ‘urban’ story-telling with writer-in-residence Andrew Killeen. Andrew will read his own work inspired by and created during his Barber residency. Members of the public, university students and pupils from King Edwards VI Boys School will also perform work produced whilst attending writing workshops at the Barber. You will also hear dramatic city-themed excerpts written by some of the ‘greats’ such as Charles Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin and Georg Simmel, read by academics from the English department (University of Birmingham). During the interval enjoy a glass of wine, and explore the galleries with our literary and city themed art trails.
In association with The Barber Institute of Fine Arts.
For more information and to book a place contact The Barber Institute of Fine Arts on 0121 414 2261 or email education@barber.org.uk.
Tell Me On A Sunday: Blank Canvas
9 months ago
Sunday 7 October
5 – 7pm (Story Supper 5 – 6pm, event 7 – 8.30pm.)
Ikon Gallery, 1 Oozells Square Brindleyplace, West Midlands B1 2HS.
FREE, but please book.
Back for one night only this autumn, before a brand new series for 2013, the sell-out Tell Me On A Sunday is the event that brought storytelling fresh to the surface in Birmingham.
Launched in Spring 2012, Tell Me On A Sunday is true life storytelling, set in Ikon Gallery’s intimate café space, with performances punctuated by fine tapas style food, mouth-watering cakes and freshly brewed coffee. Curated by internationally acclaimed storyteller Cat Weatherill this 2012 event series took monthly themes including ‘secrets and lies’ and ‘feathers and bones’ and invited anyone to have a go at pitching a story to be told live. We got tales of broken bones and sugarcane fields, of divorces and rock bands, horrible bosses and Wheel of Fortune. The only rule was that the stories had to be true.
For this event we present the best from 2012, with plenty of special guests from the storytelling circuit, brought together in one grand show for the Birmingham Book Festival. There is no theme, leaving the tellers the ultimate freedom to surprise, move and delight us. Transferring from Café Ikon to the larger gallery space, the event will take the café’s cosy cabaret atmosphere with it.
Come along, grab a bite to eat before the event starts with Café Ikon’s Story Supper (6-7pm) and then bring your drink to the gallery for an evening of electric performance.
#tmoas
www.facebook.com/pages/Tell-Me-On-A-Sunday/468734389805423
Presented in partnership between Ikon Gallery and Writing West Midlands.
To book please call the Ikon Gallery on 0121 248 0708.
Dreamingham: A Birmingham Roadtrip (Workshop)
9 months ago
Sunday 7 October, 11am – 4pm
Start and end point: Ikon Gallery, 1 Oozells Square, Birmingham, B1 2HS
£25 / £20
A Writing Workshop with Mark Ellis & Chris Poolman
Earlier this year writer Mark Ellis and artist Chris Poolman went on a commission in search of the ‘West Midlands dream’. Dreamingham continues this epic narrative, with Mark and Chris leading a ‘road trip’ writing workshop around Birmingham city centre and Digbeth.
Applying the same method used for the initial road trip – the transposing of American locations onto comparable places in the West Midlands (Solihull / California) – Dreamingham will invite participants to imagine New York as Birmingham and Birmingham as New York. The workshop will be followed by an informal evening event later in the Autumn (date tbc) in which participants will have the opportunity to present their writing to an audience.
Rediscover your city through your own imagination.
N.B: the workshop’s starting point will be four short stories based in New York and these will be distributed to participants in advance. Please make sure you give an email address when booking. Travel will be on foot so wear suitable shoes.
The original Roadtrip West Midlands project was a Turning Point West Midlands / Writing West Midlands commission more information about the project can be found here.
To book please call the BOX on 0121 245 4455 or click here.
Readers’ Afternoon
9 months ago
Saturday 6 October, 1 – 4pm
The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TS
£8 / £5
Get some inspiration for your autumn reading, and discover the special relationship these novelists have with the books they read as well as those they write. The afternoon will include a series of short talks and question and answer sessions as well as tea, cake and a walk around the Barber’s impressive collection of paintings, sculptures, coins and medals, to hear about how we ‘read’ art work.
Patrick Gale is the author of sixteen novels, including Rough Music and Notes From An Exhibition. His most recent book, A Perfectly Good Man, is a 2012 Richard and Judy choice. Tiffany Murray was described by The Guardian as ‘the glam rock Dodie Smith’ and her second novel, Diamond Star Halo was selected as one of ‘the best’ in their pick of 2010 Fiction. Gaynor Arnold’s first novel, Girl in a Blue Dress, based on the marriage of Charles Dickens, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2008 and the Orange Prize for Fiction 2009. After Such Kindness is inspired by the tender and troubling friendship between Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell. Read our Amazon review of After Such Kindness here. Andy Killeen is the author of two novels, most recently The Khalifah’s Mirror. Andy is currently Writer In Residence at The Barber Institute and has been working with the 16th-19th Century collections of European Coins & Medals, exploring the stories told by the imagery and artwork they contain. An Amazon review by the Birmingham Book Festival team can be found here.
In partnership with the West Midlands Readers’ Network.
Supported by The Barber Institute.
To book please call the BOX on 0121 245 4455 or click here.
Poets’ Place Special with Apples & Snakes
9 months ago
Saturday 6 October
Lower Ground Floor, Central Library, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham, B3 3HQ
2-4pm
This special edition of Poets’ Place will give participants the opportunity to have their poems read by some of today’s leading poets. Working in several smaller groups, we will share your work and solicit feedback from the day’s special guests. Don’t miss this free opportunity to get a fresh perspective on your writing!
Entry is free, drop in!
Being Human – SOLD OUT
9 months ago
Being Human – Poetry in Performance
Saturday 6 October, 8 – 9.30pm
The Custard Factory Theatre, The Custard Factory, Gibb Street, Birmingham B9 4AA
£10 / £6
Charting the drama of our lives, Being Human presents thoughtful and passionate poems that will touch the heart, stir the mind and fire the spirit; poems about being human, about love and loss, fear and longing, hurt and wonder. Being Human is a dramatic performance of poetry drawn from the anthology Being Human (Ed. Neil Astley), published by Bloodaxe Books. Directed by Steve Byrne of Interplay with design and music from Talking Birds, it is performed by Barrett Robertson, Benedict Hastings and Elinor Middleton. After sellout performances in the Midlands in June, Being Human is now on a national tour and this is one of your last chances to see a show that audiences have described as ‘…an amazing theatrical experience’ and ‘absolutely stunning’. We think it is this year’s best poetry experience!
Copies of the anthology, Being Human, will be on sale during this event and at the Festival Pop-up Bookshop.
To book please call the BOX on 0121 245 4455 or by clicking here.
A Midland Creative Projects production in association with The Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, and Bloodaxe Books. Being Human is Made in the Midlands.
Writing Workshop: Writing Non-Fiction with Fiona Joseph
9 months ago
Saturday 13 October 2012
South Birmingham College, Digbeth, Birmingham B5 5SU
10am – 12.30pm
£25 / £20
Come and join Birmingham writer Fiona Joseph for a fun and inspiring Creative Writing session. In this 2.5 hour workshop Fiona will guide you through the basic elements of writing non-fiction in a more creative way, showing you how to:
•find your topic(s) and develop your ‘voice’
•incorporate research material into your work without it becoming boring or dry
•enliven your writing using narrative techniques borrowed from fiction
•transform personal events, experiences and memories into an entertaining story
All levels are welcome, including beginners. Just bring a pen, a notebook and plenty of enthusiasm. It is hoped by the end of the session each participant will have a rough draft of a piece of writing to take home and polish.
Fiona Joseph is a Birmingham-based writer of fiction and non-fiction. Her latest book BEATRICE (a biography of Beatrice Cadbury) was recently long-listed in the Rubery Book Award. Read our Amazon review here.
To book your place please call the BOX on 0121 245 4455 or click here.
Writing Workshop: These Are a Few of My Favourite Things with Liz Lochhead
9 months ago
Saturday 13 October
10am – 12.30pm
South Birmingham College, Digbeth, Birmingham B5 5SU
£25 / £20
How do you write well about a place or object dear to you? Is it about description or emotion? Scotland’s National Poet Liz Lochhead conducts a workshop in finding the right words to frame a passion, discussing how landscape, art, history and literature have inspired her work. Find a review for Liz’s book A Choosing from the Birmingham Book Festival Team here.
To book please call the BOX on 0121 245 4455 or click here.
Writing Workshop: Storm In A Teacup with Deborah McAndrew
9 months ago
Saturday 13 October 2012
South Birmingham College, Digbeth, Birmingham B5 5SU
1.30 – 4pm
£25 / £20
Does your prose contain a lot of dialogue? Could it be that you’re really itching to write drama? A short, one act play might be just the place to start. Join Deborah for a practical workshop covering all the basics of the craft of dramatic writing: story; structure; characterisation; dialogue; devices – and applying these disciplines to the compact form of the short play.
Deborah is currently guest lecturer in Playwriting at Staffordshire University Department of Drama, Performance and Theatre Arts. Deborah’s play Losing The Plot is currently touring with Mikron Theatre Company until November; and her new version of A Government Inspector, adapted from the original by Nikolai Gogol, opens at Harrogate Theatre for Northern Broadsides on 7September 2012, before embarking on a national tour until 1December.
To book your place please call the BOX on 0121 245 4455 or click here.
Writing Workshop: Sniff & Write with Judith Allnatt
9 months ago
Saturday 13 October
South Birmingham College, Digbeth, Birmingham B5 5SU
1.30 – 4pm
£25 / £20
Have you ever experienced a vivid memory as the result of a waft of scent? What association does the smell of chips, roses or wet streets bring to mind? Our sense of smell is located close to the memory centre in the brain and in this workshop we will use it to act as a powerful stimulant in triggering associations from which new writing will develop. Suitable for those with some writing experience who are interested in writing fiction, autobiography or poetry. Not suitable for those who have a bad cold!
To book your place please call the BOX on 0121 245 4455 or visit their site here.
Writing Workshop: Once Upon A Time In The West Midlands with Liz Berry
9 months ago
Saturday 13 October
South Birmingham College, Digbeth, Birmingham B5 5SU
10am – 12.30pm
£25 / £20
Join Liz Berry for a morning of poetry inspired by the stories and places of the West Midlands. Discover new poems in Victorian canal maps, tumbling pigeons, custard powder and tranklements. A workshop full of fun and ideas for generating new poems. Suitable for poets of all stages.
Liz Berry was born in the Black Country. She received an Eric Gregory Award in 2009 and her pamphlet The Patron Saint of Schoolgirls was published as the winner of the Tall-Lighthouse prize in 2010. Her poems have appeared in many of the major UK magazines and on Radio 3. She has written about the Black Country dialect for the Young Poets Network and The Poetry School. Read some of Liz’s West Midlands poems at www.lizberrypoetry.co.uk.
To book your place please call the BOX on 0121 245 4455 or visit their site here.
Writing Workshop: Making Each Word Count with Juliet Clare Bell
9 months ago
Saturday 13 October 2012
South Birmingham College, Digbeth, Birmingham B5 5SU
10am – 12.30pm
£25 / £20
Do you write picture books? Are you seriously considering it? Join Clare for a practical session covering: writing the story; length of text and making every word count; page turns; pictures, and leaving room for them in your manuscript; effective editing; to rhyme or not to rhyme?; generating ideas; manuscript layout; critique groups; who to send your manuscripts to –and when. Please bring either a favourite picture book, or, if you have a manuscript and would like brief, group feedback on specific areas covered in the workshop, a picture book manuscript.
Clare’s latest book is The Kite Princess (Barefoot Books, 2012; illustrated by Laura-Kate Chapman, read by Imelda Staunton).
To book your place please call the BOX on 0121 245 4455 or click here to visit their site.
Writing Workshop: Free The Poem Music Workshop with LiTTLe MACHiNe
9 months ago
Saturday 13 October 2012
South Birmingham College, Digbeth, Birmingham B5 5SU
2 – 4pm
£25 / £20
LiTTLe MACHiNe set poems to music and perform them. Before appearing at The Old Library, Custard Factory, with Liz Lochhead and Liz Berry for the Festival’s Closing Party, they will be running this workshop to give you a chance to try doing this too.
“The most brilliant music and poetry band I’ve seen in decades”
Carol Ann Duffy.
“Little Machine made me fall in love with old favourites and new ones all over again. They make you laugh and break your heart ...” Gillian Clarke, National Poet of Wales.
Sometimes it seems poems are imprisoned inside books. LiTTLe MACHiNe try and release them so they can reach people in a different way. Bring a poem and you will work with them to find music that gives the words a new life.
LiTTLe MACHiNe will play one or two of the poems from their new CD, ‘MADAM LIFE’, to give you a flavour of the way they achieve this before helping you try it yourself.
There will be chance to perform some of the settings created in the workshop. Guitars and a keyboard will be available, but bring your own instrument if you prefer, or just your voice.
To book your place please call the BOX on 0121 245 4455 or visit their site here.
Writing Workshop: Found In Translation with Bohdan Piasecki
9 months ago
Saturday 13th October
South Birmingham College, Digbeth, Birmingham B5 5SU
10am – 12.30pm
£25 / £20
Poetry is what gets lost in translation, said Robert Frost (and every journalist who wrote about the subject). Bohdan Piasecki disagrees. His workshop will help you build on approaches and strategies used by literary translators to develop your own poetic voice and step out of your comfort zone. Combining translation work with creative writing, the session will leave you eager to explore the foreign and the unexpected in your own words. Important note: participants are not required to know more than one language.
Bohdan Piasecki is a poet from Poland based in Birmingham; he has a PhD in poetry translation, and he is not afraid to use it.
To book your place please call the BOX on 0121 245 4455 or by clicking here.
Writing Workshop: Edit Your Short Fiction Into A Collection with Dragan Todorovic
9 months ago
Saturday 13 October
South Birmingham College, Digbeth, Birmingham B5 5SU
1.30 – 4pm
£25 / £20
Can you use Eisenstein’s montage of attractions in your fiction? Do you recognise the warnings your own subconscious has placed in your works? Are you writing between the lines? Is the avalanche of words choking your ideas? This intensive workshop will show you how to start improving your writing through self-editing, and how to create short fiction collections out of your work.
This workshop is for those who have already written some short fiction.
Dragan Todorovic is an award-winning Canadian author who has published creative non-fiction, poetry, novels, and stories. He is teaching creative writing at Kent University. His new book of short stories Little Red Radio from Trieste was published by Nine Arches Press.
It is vital that you leave your email address with us when booking in order to receive some instructions and reading material in advance.
Supported by Nine Arches Press.
To book your place please call the BOX on 0121 245 4455 or by clicking here.
What’s Love Got To Do With It?
9 months ago
Saturday 13 October
Birmingham Library Theatre, Central Library, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham, B3 3HQ
2 – 3.30pm
Join our three guest writers: Sagheer Ahmed, Yasmin Hai and Bali Rai as they discuss the subject of love and relationships for young Asians today.
Admission is free but please book by clicking here or by calling the BOX on 0121 245 4455.
Liz Lochhead & Liz Berry with LiTTLe MACHiNe
9 months ago
Saturday 13 October, 7pm – approx 10pm
The Old Library, The Custard Factory, Gibb Street, Birmingham B9 4AA
Bar available.
£10 / £6
Appointed Scots Makar – the National Poet for Scotland – in 2011, Liz Lochhead is both transgressive and popular; as Anne Varty wrote, ‘her work is that of one woman speaking to many, and one person speaking for many’.
Liz wrote her first poem, The Visit, after she entered the Glasgow School of Art in 1965. In 1971 she won a Radio Scotland poetry competition and in 1972 her first collection, Memo for Spring, was published. In 1978 her second collection, Islands, was published. She then wrote and performed Sugar and Spite at the Traverse, Edinburgh. As well as her poetry flair Lochhead has had notable theatre successes including her adaptation of Molière’s Tartuffe for the Lyceum (1986) and Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off, performed by Communicado (1987). These two plays derive much of their energy from the way Lochhead uses Scots, admiringly characterised by Robert Crawford in Identifying Poets (1993) as ‘a diction of kaleidoscopic pace and liveliness’.
Lochhead’s sixth collection, The Colour of Black and White – poems 1984-2003, includes ‘Kidspoem/Bairnsang’, which has become one of her signature poems and a touchstone for the decade. It is cleverly but also appealingly bilingual, perfect for showing those who don’t know Scots how the language marches beside English. She has a love of music and the visual arts, both of which form essential parts to her work.
Above all it is her ability to speak with conversational intimacy within a public space that is one of the hallmarks of Liz Lochhead’s work, and we are thrilled to bring this to you in our final event of this year’s Festival.
Reading with Liz is poet Liz Berry, born in the Black Country and now living in London where she works as an infant school teacher. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway and received an Eric Gregory Award in 2009. Her poems have appeared in many of the major UK magazines and on BBC Radio 3. Her debut pamphlet The Patron Saint of School Girls was published by in 2010. She is Emerging Poet in Residence at Kingston University and a 2011/12 Arvon Jerwood mentee.
After their reading Liz and Liz will join us in welcoming the band LiTTLe MACHiNe who will play out the Festival with some well known poems set to music – including some of Lochhead’s own.
Loved by many national poet laureates, LiTTLe MACHiNe bring us poems, classic and obscure, given a new voice in songs crafted by Walter Wray, Steve Halliwell and Chris Hardy. Acoustic instruments, strong melodies and watertight harmonies create songs that draw on a thousand years of poetry from the Medieval to the Metaphysicals, the Romantics to the modern. Poetry is the best words in the best order and LiTTLe MACHiNe have been just as careful in creating new music that can move the feet for words that move the soul.
Visit www.little-machine.com to hear the band, and the BOX website to book tickets. To book via telephone please call the BOX on 0121 245 4455.
Reliable Witness
9 months ago
Thursday 4 – Saturday 13 October 2012
Opening Times: Monday – Saturday 10am – 6pm
Sundays 11am – 5pm
Pavilions Unit 10, Lower Ground Floor, Birmingham, B4 7SL
Free, no booking required. Drop in.
For ages 14+
The Birmingham Book Festival’s first ever interactive storytelling installation.
Meet Darren and Amy – a young couple in love finding their feet in their relationship.
As their trusted friend you’ve been there for them, giving advice and a sympathetic ear for years. You’ve eaten meals that they have cooked for you. You’ve been over to Darren’s flat to drink tea and eat biscuits – the posh ones saved for when friends come over.
You’ve chatted about the football, the pub, the weather. You’ve relaxed in their company, you’ve shared jokes, and have been known to crash out and stare at the TV together now and again. You’ve seen them through a few ups and downs. So far, your involvement in their relationship has been passive, easy. Your loyalty has been neither divided nor tested. That’s about to change.
Darren and Amy’s story is moving quickly. Are you watching?
Reliable Witness is the Birmingham Book Festival’s first ever commissioned interactive storytelling experience.
Follow the characters on social media, become a spectator or participant in their life together. Meet and see them in the offline world. Look out for The Birmingham Book Festival team live at Artsfest on the afternoon of Saturday 8 September, previewing this literature event with a difference.
Twitter hashtag #reliablewitness
Join us for the Reliable Witness Panel Discussion:
Tuesday 9 October, 6.15 – 7:30pm – free event.
Members of the Reliable Witness project team (writers, digital developer, social media manager) discuss the production of this interactive literature commission for Birmingham Book Festival 2012.
Places are limited and booking is essential if interested please email lauren.davies@redlantern.co.uk to book your free place.
Visit the Reliable Witness website here and the photographs from the ArtsFest performance here.
Written by: Mez Packer and Rochi Rampal
Produced by: The Adhere Creative (Digital Development), Birmingham Book Festival (Project Design & Commission) and Red Lantern Project Management Ltd (Project Design & Management)
Red Lantern Project Management and the Birmingham Book Festival have teamed up with two West Midlands based writers Mez Packer and Rochi Rampal and digital agency The Adhere Creative, to create this bold commission of new work as part of the Birmingham Book Festival this October.
Reliable Witness places the audience member as witness and adjudicator, whose interaction with a story in a physical, digitally enhanced space will influence its outcome.
The project has been specially commissioned for Birmingham Book Festival 2012 and is funded by Arts Council England’s Grants for the Arts Scheme with generous sponsorship support from Cobbetts LLP and special thanks to Birmingham Central Library staff.
Venue Partner: Pavilions
Funders: Arts Council England (Grants for the Arts)
Sponsors: Cobbetts
With thanks to: Birmingham Central Library
A Birmingham Book Festival 2012 commission
Events associated with Reliable Witness:
Saturday 13 October – 6.00 – 7pm - Close down event at Pavilions shopping centre Unit 10, Lower ground floor – last chance to experience Reliable Witness
The New Libya: Its writers and bloggers
9 months ago
Monday 8 October, 7 – 8.30pm
Bay Leaf Restaurant, Unit 16/17, The Custard Factory, Gibb Street, Digbeth, Birmingham, B9 4AA
£8 / £5
Three Libyan authors read from their works and discuss life for writers under Gaddafi and how the future in the new Libya is shaping up
Ghazi Gheblawi is a well-known author, blogger, journalist and surgeon. He co-founded the online newspaper Libya Alyoum (Libya Today) and in 2005 founded his award-winning Imtidad blog, and produces, with Mohamed Mesratie, the Imtidad Cultural Podcast, focusing on cultural, literary and social issues in Libya and the Arab world, working for “a better future for Libya that is free, democratic, and just”. He has two collections of short stories and poems.
Giuma Bukleb published his short stories in Libyan literary magazines but stopped writing for many years after being imprisoned by the Gaddafi regime for 10 years in the late 1970s. He has lived in the UK since 1988, and has published works in Arab newspapers and in one collection, and in English translation in Banipal 40 – Libyan Fiction. Some of his poems are published online.
Mohamed Mesratie was born in 1990 in Tripoli and came here with his family in 2005. He started writing and publishing short stories when he was just 16. His novel-in-progress Mama Pizza was excerpted in Banipal 40. He recently said: “As a writer or as an activist or as a blogger, my goal, my dream is to write to celebrate freedom, also liberation. That’s what we get from writing, that’s what makes us satisfied.” When he is not blogging, writing or working in a book shop, Mohamed studies English Literature and Creative Writing at London University.
Banipal’s publisher Margaret Obank, who this year attended the new Libya’s first International Tripoli Poetry Festival, will moderate the evening.
To book please call the BOX on 0121 245 4455 or click here.
Off Campus: Student Writers’ Performance Challenge
9 months ago
Monday 8 October
7.30 – 9pm
Bacchus Bar (Dining Room) (beneath the Burlington Hotel) New Street, Burlington Arcade, Birmingham, B2 4JH
FREE, but please book
If you are a student and you can turn a good phrase then we need you. We’re inviting students of Higher Education Institutions in the West Midlands to bring a team to engage in some competitive writing sharing – for glory and free drinks!
The competition: Teams of three people take it in turns to perform short pieces (3 minutes long) of original creative writing to an audience. Our panel of judges score each one, and the team with the highest score at the end of the night wins. Marks will be given for the quality of the writing and the performance.
The rules: Your team must all be HE students, and must all be from the same institution, and it must be within the West Midlands. You don’t have to be Creative Writing or English students. You don’t even have to be friends! The writing performed must be your own.
It’s free to enter, free to come along, and you will spend your evening in the sumptuous drinking parlour that is Bacchus Bar, one of Birmingham’s hidden gems, where you are never without a warm welcome. Heckling optional.
To register a team: Contact Joanne Penn at joanne[at]writingwestmidlands.org.
To book tickets for the performances please call the BOX on 0121 245 4455 or click here.
The Gentlemen Press
9 months ago
Monday 8 October
Festival Pop-Up Bookshop, Birmingham Central Library Foyer, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham, B3 3HQ
5 – 6pm
The Gentlemen Press competition was run in 2011 for 13 to 21 year olds in the UK. The 21 winners were published in an anthology titled Objection to Perfection. The theme was perfection and covered many different topics from body image to identity. The genres are also varied and include speculative, contemporary and even a fable. This is your chance to hear the writers read and to hear a little more about The Gentlemen Press and plans for the future.
Entry is free, drop in!
