What's new?

Or: another post containing a list of good news....

"Brick Mother... is urban, northern and authentic", says Dave Schofield over at Structo magazine; you can read the full review here

Upcoming appearances:

Richard Smyth and I will be appearing at Bad Language on 27th August, at The Castle Hotel in Manchester. More information here

I'll also be appearing at Wakefield Lit Fest, alongside Richard Smyth, as part of 'Dead Ink in Conversation', on Thursday 24th September.

The next Fictions of Every Kind is themed: Whodunnit?! with invited speaker AJ Taft and murder ballads performed by Lowlands. As ever, there'll be a writers' open mic, sociability, and word games. You can find out more here, or the facebook events page is here. We love to see new faces and we're a very friendly lot - you're welcome to come along even if you're not planning to read anything out - we would love to meet you. (Wharf Chambers is a members' club and you do have to be a member to attend events, but it is very easy to join - it only costs £1 and anyone can do it! See the Wharf Chambers website for details.)

Currently reading

How to fight Islamist terror from the missionary position Tabish Khair

Fictions of Every Kind: Home

The next Fictions of Every Kind will be on Tuesday March 25th, themed: Home. Invited speakers will be Nasser Hussain and Zodwa Nyoni. The event will take place at Wharf Chambers* in Leeds, starting at 19:30. Entry, as ever, will be a recession-friendly £3.

Zodwa Nyoni is a Zimbabwean-born poet & playwright. She was named as one of Leeds' 20 best writers under 40 last year, and was apprentice poet in residence at last years' Ilkley Literature Festival. Nasser Hussain is a poet and performer who lectures in creative writing at York University.

Music will come from David Broad. As ever, there will be a writers' open mic - please keep your contributions at 5 minutes or under; we'll be enforcing this time limit, so please practise reading your work out beforehand to check it fits! Short stories, flash fiction, true stories and excerpts from larger works are all welcome.

Nasser's very hard to google. Here he is reading a poem about that very fact:



And here's Zodwa performing with Vanessa Rani Chutturgoon at last years' Ilkley Literature Festival:



* Please note: Wharf Chambers is a members club & you must be a member to attend an event here. Joining costs £1 and takes a minimum of 48 hours to take effect. For more info visit www.wharfchambers.org

Fictions of Every Kind

Fictions of Every Kind is a quarterly DIY writers' night based in Leeds, UK. It has been running for 2 years now and is run by a small group of writers, including myself. Our aim is to provide support and encouragement to anyone involved in the lonely act of writing. You can find out more about our planned events by following us on twitter (@fictionsoek), on facebook, or going to our website.

It has recently come to my attention that the Fictions Of Every Kind website doesn't show up in web results, and I'm not really sure why this is. I spent a bit of time trying to find out, but it turns out that when you type "Why doesn't my website show up in Google" into Google, the answers you get back are all a load of two-year old gobbledegook. I couldn't make any sense of any of them.

As a shortcut, knowing that this blog does show up in search engines (oh, sweet mysteries of the internet), I've decided to put a link to the Fictions of Every Kind website here. You can add it to your RSS feed or blogger feed or whatever it is you young people do to stay abreast of things these days. Our next event, themed 'Apocalypse', is on December 11th at Wharf Chambers with the singularly marvellous Anneliese Mackintosh. There will be games, prizes, the writers' open mic (true stories, short and flash fiction and novel excerpts all welcome; please keep your contributions at 7 minutes or under), a DJ, and a short film screening. Entry will continue to be a recession-friendly £3.