There is a plethora of exciting events throughout this year’s Festival of Libraries (7-11th June, 2023). There are lots of talks and activities, exhibitions and support sessions. What we think many of you will be very excited about, and warrant particular attention, are the number of workshops available for the budding writers amongst you!

These span writing across different age ranges, include poetry and prose, span the various Greater Manchester boroughs, and a lot of them are free to attend. Most require booking, so please use the links for any workshops you’re interested in to make sure you know how to book on.

 

Manga

Manga workshops may not immediately strike you as a writing workshop, but they are legitimate storytelling and we have to think through the best way to utilise the very little text we have available to convey the story’s message. These workshops for young people cover 3 different Greater Manchester boroughs.

• Friday 9th June, 4-6pm, Bury – Central Library
• Saturday 10th June, 10-12pm, Tameside – Stalybridge Library
• Saturday 10th June, 1-3pm, Tameside – Stalybridge Library
• Saturday 10th June, 12-2pm, Trafford – Stretford Library

 

Poetry

Masterclass with Simon Armitage is an incredible 1 hour free poetry writing workshop with the UK’s Poet Laureate at 4pm on Friday 9th June at Manchester Central Library.

Writing Workshop with Anjum Malik is a free poetry writing workshop with one of Manchester’s Multilingual City Poets to celebrate South-Asian heritage through poems. This workshop is at Manchester Central Library from 5-7pm on Wednesday 7th June.

New Radical Voices with Oliver Lomax is running for the festival, but is one of four 4 hour poetry workshops for young people. This event is from 12-4pm Sunday 11th June at Salford’s Working Class Movement Library. The poems from these workshops will be entered into a competition where the winning entries will be read by Maxine Peak and Carla Henry at the Library’s annual Radical Readers event.

 

Prose

Writing for Wellbeing are free creative writing workshops in Manchester and Stockport in partnership with Creative Manchester. We know that talking about our health has positive benefits and creating something from nothing is beneficial to our mental wellbeing, so why not combine the two? Professionals from the Centre for New Writing will guide people through the process of writing for our own health.

• Stockport – Marple Library 12-2pm, Wednesday 7th June.
• Manchester – Chetham’s Library 12-2pm Thursday 8th June.

 

We hope that there is at least one workshop you can make it along to. Let us know how you get on and show us what you create and write using the festival hashtag on your preferred social media: #FestivalofLibraries