Events
Tell Me On A Sunday
2 weeks ago
We know you have a story in you. Unleash it. Conjure a memory, recent or ancient, good or bad.
Tell it to yourself, re-tell it, hone it, cut it, embellish it. Pitch it to us. Get on stage and tell it.
Ikon, in collaboration with the Birmingham Book Festival presents a new series of free literary events. Hosted in Café Ikon, Tell Me On A Sunday is storytelling from life. Participants tell stories based around a specially selected theme, all with truth (and a good performance!) at their heart.
Each month, five storytellers will be chosen to perform a seven minute story live.
The events feature special guests and are curated by Cat Weatherill, one of Europe’s leading performance storytellers, who will also tell her own story. Originally championed by the Hay Festival, Cat has been creating and telling tales to adults and children for twelve years. She is also a best selling author, with books translated into nine languages.
The dates of these events are:
Sunday 19 February
Theme: Off the beaten track
Sunday 25 March
Theme: Hope and glory
Sunday 22 April
Theme: Feathers and bones
All events running from 4pm – 6.30pm and are FREE
Events begin at 4pm with Story Supper, a chance to meet fellow audience members and story tellers over a special Café Ikon menu (contact Ikon for prices). Performances commence at 5pm, finishing at 6.30pm.
Please note these events are intended for adult audiences. Places are free but should be reserved by calling Ikon on 0121 248 0708.
How to pitch your story:
Please visit the event page to see full details of how to pitch your own story and guidelines.
Join us for the launch of Clare Morrall’s new novel
2 weeks ago
Tuesday 21st February
The Roundabout Man by Clare Morrall
7pm – 8.30pm/ Free Event
Ikon Gallery
1 Oozells Square
Birmingham, B1 2HS
Sceptre and Writing West Midlands are delighted to invite you to celebrate the publication of the new novel from Clare Morrall, The Roundabout Man.
Who is The Roundabout Man? He doesn’t look like a tramp, yet he lives on a roundabout in a caravan and survives on the leftovers from a nearby motorway service station. He calls himself Quinn, the name of a boy in a world-famous series of children’s books, but he’s nearer retirement than childhood.
What he hopes no one will discover is that he’s the real Quinn, immortalised as a child by his mother in her entrancing tales about a little boy’s adventures with his triplet sisters. It is this inheritance he has successfully run away from- until now. When Quinn’s reclusive existence is invaded, he is forced to face his past, and the uncomfortable truths and secrets it contains about himself, his sisters and, most of all, his mother.
This event includes a reading and book signing.
How to book:
Places are free but should be reserved by calling Ikon on 0121 248 0708.
Speak to Strangers
4 months ago
Saturday 15th October
4pm/ Free
Festival Bookshop, Library Foyer, Central Library, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham, B3 3HQ
Originally a daily fiction blog, Speak to Strangers was 100 hundred-word stories, one for each day, based on random encounters with Londoners. The series is now available in print, published by Penned in the Margins.
Speak to Strangers will visit Birmingham in October, aiming to document and capture the essence of the city through a series of original hundred-word stories.
You can follow Gemma online – day by day – as she meets and records her interactions with authors, poets and festival-goers in a new sequence hundred-word stories. And you’re invited to write about your own experiences of speaking to strangers at the festival, all at www.gemmaseltzer.co.uk.
Hear Gemma read her stories and share her experience of speaking to strangers in our Festival Bookshop from 4pm on Saturday 15th October.
To find out more, you can follow Speak to Strangers on Twitter @gemseltz and #speaktostrangers
Tickets: Free, no need to book
Celebrate Wha? An anthology of West Midlands poets
5 months ago
Here’s an event you might like, featuring the current Birmingham Poet Laureate, Roy McFarlane, and others from the West Midlands..
The Drum presents Celebrate Wha?
Hosted by Dr Robert Beckford, a night of poetry, conversations and music…
- Thu 22 Sep, 7.30pm
- £5 (£3)
- Studio
Ten Black British Poets from the West Midlands
Edited by Eric Doumerc and Roy McFarlane (Birmingham Poet Laureate 2011)
Celebrate Wha? is an anthology of poems about identity and race, curried goat ‘n’ rice. Ten poets – Dreadlock Alien, Sue Brown, Marcia Calame, Evoke, Martin Glynn, Michelle Hubbard, Kokumo, Roy McFarlane, Chester Morrison and Moqapi Selassie – explore what it means to be black and British and from the West Midlands. This is the English language in a Caribbean coat, Auden in a Creole accent. Celebrate Wha? celebrates writing with a reggae rhythm, born out of a heady mixture of dub, grime and performance poetry, politics and music, anger and laughter. Join us for the official launch of an anthology dedicated to Birmingham’s Black poets – long overdue.
http://www.the-drum.org.uk/event/celebrate-wha
Follow the progress of Boy You Turn Me
5 months ago
You can now follow the progress of our specially commissioned sound installation called Boy You Turn Me on a blog. The installation by contemporary classical composer Ailis Ni Riain and writer David Gaffney will be situated in a vacant shop unit within the Pavilions shopping centre for the duration of the Birmingham Book Festival 2011 (6th – 16th October)
You can view the blog here www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/1463010. To find out more about the project please click here.
There is also a Facebook group that you can join http://www.facebook.com/pages/Birmingham-Book-Festival/97775632519#!/groups/213492258688104/?id=237525156284814¬if_t=group_activity
Boy You Turn Me, Thursday 6th – Sunday 16th October 2011, Unit 10, Pavilions, Birmingham, B4 7SL
Supported by: 
States of Independence (West)
5 months ago
Saturday 8th October
10am – 4pm/ Free, just drop in
Eastside Projects (Gallery),
86 Heath Mill Lane, Digbeth,
Birmingham, B9 4AR
States of Independence (West) is a book fair celebrating regional (and some national) independent publishers of poetry, fiction, art and several points in between. Come and browse the latest in independent publications, meet publishers, writers and other readers. There will be a programme of events and readings throughout the day, including panel discussions and flash workshops, as well as a quiet area to relax with a coffee and your just-bought book. Set within the striking surrounds of Eastside Projects Digbeth gallery, this is a chance to explore the vibrant independent publishing movement in the West ands and beyond.
States of Independence (West) has been produced by the West Midlands Independent Publishers Network, and has been managed by Writing West Midlands and Nine Arches Press. The Network includes Nine Arches Press, Flarestack Poets, Cinnamon Press, Offa’s Press, Five Seasons Press, Rubery Press and Tindal Street Press. States of Independence was first created in the East Midlands by Five Leaves Press, who have supported the Network in bringing this event to the West Midlands.
Publishers who will be present at States of Independence include:
Shoestring Press
Leafe Press
Cinnamon Press
Penned in the Margins
Five Leaves Publications
Flarestack Poets
Sidekick Books
Tindal Street Press
Offa’s Press
Supported by Eastside Projects www.eastsideprojects.org
Price: Free, just come in and browse!
The Writers’ Walk
5 months ago
Sunday 16th October
12pm – 1pm/ Free
Meet at the MAC Cafe, Cannon Hill Park,
Edgbaston, Birmingham, B12 9QH
Start your Sunday off with a stroll around the park. It’s simple- meet us at MAC, and wander with us, talking about writing, reading, anything you like.
Bring your children, friends, dogs- all welcome. Afterwards we will retire to the café for a warming cup of tea or coffee before going on to a great afternoon of events to close the Festival.
Tickets: Free- no need to book.
Meet us at the MAC Cafe at 12pm
.
Closing Party with Ellen Deckwitz & Daan Doesborgh
5 months ago
Sunday 16th October
5.30pm- 6.30pm/ Free (Open Mic slots £5 each)
Open Space, MAC, Cannon Hill Park, Edgbaston, Birmingham
Finish the Festival properly with a feast of spoken word – open mic slots for the city’s up and coming poets, hosted and followed by Dutch poetry slam legends Daan Doesborgh and Ellen Deckwitz. Both national champions in Slam Poetry in their home country, they come to Birmingham with a show put together just for us. Combining their powers, they present L&D: a Dutch supergroup of poetry slam.
Also known as the Siegfried and Roy of poetry performance, Ellen and Daan will bring you a show filled with poetry, humour, mime and Dutch folklore. Find out why people already refer to them as the bosses of spoken word! Allow them to bring you to laughter and to tears, and then join us in the bar to celebrate another great year of literature.
Tickets: Free, no need to book.
If you would like to share your poetry with an audience, we have six 3 minute slots available for our open mic which is included in this event.
Email joanne[at]birminghambookfestival.org to apply by the 1st October 2011.
Book Doctors
5 months ago
Friday 7th October &
Thursday 13th October
1pm – 6pm/ Free
Festival Bookshop,Library Foyer,
Central Library, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham, B3 3HQ
Are you stuck in a reading rut? Do you have literary lethargy? Come and see the Book Doctors and discover some exciting new reads!
This event is part of the Festival Fringe.
Presented in Partnership with Birmingham Libraries.
Tickets: Free, just drop in
Your Favourite Poems
5 months ago
Tuesday 11th October
12pm – 2pm/ Free
Festival Bookshop, Library Foyer,
Central Library, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham, B3 3HQ
Come and share your favourite poem in the Festival Bookshop! You will also be able to find out about our other events, buy books, mugs, bags and more or take the Bodies in The Library tour.
This event is part of the Fringe Festival.
Presented in Partnership with Birmingham Libraries.
Tickets: Free, just drop in.
