Ghosts at the Old Library
Here’s a project I’m running this Christmas for Levenshulme Old Library, the arts charity in my neighbourhood where I work.
I’ve commissioned new ghost stories from six writers for a series of immersive and atmospheric winter events. Tickets for these are now available here.
Levenshulme Old Library is a former Carnegie library building built in 1904 which now operates as a community arts centre in South Manchester. This Christmas, you can come and listen to performances from new ghost stories written by some of the North West’s finest writers. You can also buy copies of the individual stories, as each will also be published as a Christmas card, or listen to recordings which will be broadcast on ALLFM over the festive season and made available as podcasts on Spotify.
Here are the authors I’ve been working with:
Marie Crook writes poetry, short fiction and creative non-fiction. Her work has been published in The Real Story, The Caterpillar and Confingo and she runs the creative writing workshop series Feed the Fox.
Gaynor Jones is the author of Among These Animals. She has won the Northern Writer’s Award, the Bath Flash Fiction Prize and the Mairtín Crawford Short Story Award, among others.
Jo Howard is a writer of children’s and young adult fiction and a poet, singer and scriptwriter. A regular on the Northern spoken word scene, Jo runs Book Jive Live, a Zoom open mic for kidlit and YA. Her work has been published in Confingo, The Writer’s Cafe and Funny Pearls magazines and in the 100 Voices anthology to celebrate 100 years of women’s suffrage.
Lauren O’Donoghue is a writer from South Yorkshire. Her fiction has been published in ergot, and Mslexia among others. Her interactive fiction Ataraxia can be found here.
Dyani Sheppard is a writer based in Manchester.
Nicholas Royle is the author of five collections of short fiction, two works of nonfiction and seven novels, most recently First Novel. He edits an annual series of anthologies called Best British Short Stories and runs Nightjar Press which publishes original short stories.
Each of the stories takes a landmark in Levenshulme as its inspiration. These include The Fallowfield Loop, Alma Park School, Gorton Cemetery, Station South, the Antiques Village and Levenshulme Old Library itself.
This is a great project which has yielded some fantastic stories. You can find out more about this project and book your tickets here.