Three writers from three cities, Reykjavik, Hull and Manchester, have spent time together ahead of the Festival of Libraries online and then in each other’s cities to develop original writing in response to the theme of weather.

What if your everywhere is the middle of nowhere? What if in order to leave the country, you had to pass a test in which you describe your intimate self in another language? What is this Icelandic obsession with swimming? What kind of museum do you find in an underground public toilet?

An hour of exploration, readings, discussion, and maybe the answers to some of these questions, maybe not.

Lydia Marchant has written for Holby City, Casualty and EastEnders and her play Mumsy, about parenthood on a zero-hour contract, premiered in at Hull Truck Theatre, where she is an Affiliate Artist. Lydia writes for the British Scandal podcast, presented by Alice Levine and Matt Ford as well as Terribly Famous and Last Soviet. She has written for Paines Plough, York Theatre Royal, Derby Theatre, Pilot Theatre, Separate Doors, Middle Child Theatre, Silent Uproar and The Roaring Girls.

Jay Mitrą is a non-binary punk poet, multi slam champion, and music journalist from Hull. Their poetry has been published in Acumen Poetry, Drawn To The Light Press, Streetcake Magazine and Broken Sleep Books’ Queer Icons anthology. Jay has been featured on BBC Radio 6 and has also performed in BBC’s Contains Strong Language, Hit The Ode, Leeds LGBT Lit Fest, Manchester Pride and Manchester Punk Festival.

Ingólfur Eiríksson is an Icelandic author, poet and translator of Broadway Musicals. His first novel, The Big Book of Self-Pity, received the New Voices Grant from the Centre for Icelandic Literature. His book, Clone: A Tragi-Comicbook, a story of interconnected poems, illustrated by Elín Edda Þorsteinsdóttir, describes the lives of the clone dog Samson Ólafsson Moussaieff, surrealist painter Salvador Dali and Dolly the Sheep.

Produced by The Writing Squad with funding from Hull City Arts and Arts Council England with support from Manchester and Reykjavik Cities of Literature.