The next Word Soup: Quickening. Celebrating the coming of Spring with poet Angela Topping, and celebrating Quickies: Short Stories for Adults with Manchester’s FlashTag Collective.

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29th March 2012 from 8pm.

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Poet, critic and author Angela Topping will be headlining and will be  supported by  Sarah-Clare Conlon, Fat Roland, Benjamin Judge, David Hartley and Tom Mason of the Manchester FlashTag Collective following the release of their anthology Quickies, plus Quickies contributor and Helen Clark Award for Prose Winner Kim McGowan. Ira Lightman was previously scheduled to appear but is unfortunately unable attend.

We’ll also have our usual Open Mic slot for your Four Minutes of Fame, and the fabulous Magic Mark. Don’t miss it!!

Angela Topping is a British poet, literary critic and author. She has published three solo poetry collections, Dandelions for Mothers’ Day (1988, 1989), The Fiddle (1999) and The Way We Came (2007). She loves words and making things out of them, mostly poetry. Giving poetry to others, no matter what age or walk of life, is her passion. Angela offers readings, workshops for any age group and poets-in-schools work. A book of children’s poems is forthcoming from Salt. Her poems have been published widely and her children’s work has been included in over 45 anthologies.

http://angelatopping.wordpress.com/

The FlashTag Collective consists of five Manchester Blog Awards winners who have collaborated on a number of writing projects, including the sell-out Quickies: Short Stories for Adults anthology and associated Smut Night at Didsbury Arts Festival.

They regularly perform at spoken word events, including Bad Language, Unannounced, Say Something, The New Libertines and The Story Forum, and have appeared together at a number of festivals, including Manchester Literature Festival and Oxfam Bookfest. Our individual work is published with various literary magazines and websites, including The Pygmy Giant, Spilling Ink Review, Flax, Paraxis, Duality and Rainy City Stories, and they have compiled, edited and published two collections of short stories.

Quickies is available to buy at: http://flashtagmcr.wordpress.com/buy/

Sarah-Clare Conlon is a Manchester-based editor and flash fiction writer. She has a slight obsession with smut, but, when she’s behaving, runs the Manchester Literature Festival blog and writes about the arts on the award-winning Words & Fixtures.

Fat Roland is a prose performer and award-winning blogger. He was commended in the 2011 Manchester Fiction Prize for a 700-word alternative-reality death scene. Some of his fiction can be found at ItalicEyeball.co.uk.

Benjamin Judge lives in Littleborough. His stories have been published in various places. He believes cheese is the answer to most of life’s problems. His blog Who the Fudge is Benjamin Judge? won the Best Writing award at the Manchester Blog Awards.

David Hartley is a nugget of Preston resting in the valley of Manchester trying to write stories that no-one else has written before. His blog features a lot of rabbits and can be found at abarrelroll.blogspot.com. He also runs the award-winning film review site screen150.wordpress.com.

Tom Mason is considered to be a delicacy in his naive city of Wolverhampton. Now an adopter of the North, he still doesn’t know how to use semicolons properly, but his community flash fiction blog 330 Words is an award-winner all the same.

Kim McGowan is a Preston writer and was a Helen Clarke Award Winner two years running. Her short story Tuffnell’s Toffees for Buttery Fingers was published in Quickies: Short Stories for Adults in 2011. http://kimmcgowan.blogspot.com/

Word Soup: Quickening – Thursday 29^th March 2012 – 8pm – £3 on the door – priceless entertainment – The Continental, South Meadow Lane, Preston PR1 8JP.

The next Word Soup: Quickening. Celebrating the coming of Spring with poet Angela Topping, and celebrating Quickies: Short Stories for Adults with Manchester’s Flash Tag Collective.

Poet, critic and author Angela Topping will be headlining and will be  supported by  Sarah-Clare Conlon, Fat Roland, Benjamin Judge, David Hartley and Tom Mason of the Manchester Flash Tag Collective following the release of their anthology Quickies, plus Quickies contributor and Helen Clark Award for Prose Winner Kim McGowan. Ira Lightman was previously scheduled to appear but is unfortunately unable attend.

We’ll also have our usual Open Mic slot for your Four Minutes of Fame, and the fabulous Magic Mark. Don’t miss it!!

Angela Topping is a British poet, literary critic and author. She has published three solo poetry collections, Dandelions for Mothers’ Day (1988, 1989), The Fiddle (1999) and The Way We Came (2007). She loves words and making things out of them, mostly poetry. Giving poetry to others, no matter what age or walk of life, is her passion. Angela offers readings, workshops for any age group and poets-in-schools work. A book of children’s poems is forthcoming from Salt. Her poems have been published widely and her children’s work has been included in over 45 anthologies.

http://angelatopping.wordpress.com/

The FlashTag Collective consists of five Manchester Blog Awards winners who have collaborated on a number of writing projects, including the sell-out Quickies: Short Stories for Adults anthology and associated Smut Night at Didsbury Arts Festival.

They regularly perform at spoken word events, including Bad Language, Unannounced, Say Something, The New Libertines and The Story Forum, and have appeared together at a number of festivals, including Manchester Literature Festival and Oxfam Bookfest. Our individual work is published with various literary magazines and websites, including The Pygmy Giant, Spilling Ink Review, Flax, Paraxis, Duality and Rainy City Stories, and they have compiled, edited and published two collections of short stories.

Quickies is available to buy at: http://flashtagmcr.wordpress.com/buy/

Sarah-Clare Conlon is a Manchester-based editor and flash fiction writer. She has a slight obsession with smut, but, when she’s behaving, runs the Manchester Literature Festival blog and writes about the arts on the award-winning Words & Fixtures.

Fat Roland is a prose performer and award-winning blogger. He was commended in the 2011 Manchester Fiction Prize for a 700-word alternative-reality death scene. Some of his fiction can be found at ItalicEyeball.co.uk.

Benjamin Judge lives in Littleborough. His stories have been published in various places. He believes cheese is the answer to most of life’s problems. His blog Who the Fudge is Benjamin Judge? won the Best Writing award at the Manchester Blog Awards.

David Hartley is a nugget of Preston resting in the valley of Manchester trying to write stories that no-one else has written before. His blog features a lot of rabbits and can be found at abarrelroll.blogspot.com. He also runs the award-winning film review site screen150.wordpress.com.

Tom Mason is considered to be a delicacy in his naive city of Wolverhampton. Now an adopter of the North, he still doesn’t know how to use semicolons properly, but his community flash fiction blog 330 Words is an award-winner all the same.

Kim McGowan is a Preston writer and was a Helen Clarke Award Winner two years running. Her short story Tuffnell’s Toffees for Buttery Fingers was published in Quickies: Short Stories for Adults in 2011. http://kimmcgowan.blogspot.com/

Word Soup: Quickening – Thursday 29^th March 2012 – 8pm – £3 on the door – priceless entertainment – The Continental, South Meadow Lane, Preston PR1 8JP.

Word Soup with Jo Bell & Blackpool Dead Good Poets, plus Stephen Jansen and Sue Seddon, aka Nigella Ladylumps.

The first Word Soup of 2012 is on the theme of Friendship, in all of its guises… and the headline act is fabulous poet, performer, and director of National Poetry Day JO BELL.

Jo will be joined by the Dead Good Poets – Shaun Brookes, Lara Clayton, Stephen Stroud, Vicky Ellis, Lindsay Barlow, and Ashley R. Lister – from Blackpool, plus the talents of Stephen Jansen and Sue Seddon, aka Nigella Ladylumps.

We’ll also have our usual Open Mic slot for your Four Minutes of Fame, and the fabulous Magic Mark. Don’t miss it!!

Jo Bell has appeared all over the UK from Glastonbury Festival, where she was poet in residence in 2010, to the Southbank Centre and all points in between. She runs National Poetry Day and performs in stage shows including her current work in progress, Riverlands - a show with storyteller Jo Blake Cave. Her poems are mostly about boats (she lives on one), archaeologists (she was one) and dysfunctional relationships with wildly inappropriate men. http://belljarblog.wordpress.com/

Stephen Jansen writes about reality distortion in all its forms. He has written a book with Harvey Bainbridge, an ex member of the rock band Hawkind. His next book, Chronophobia, is the first in a series of ten and will be on sale on Kindle very soon. A collection of three short stories, called Distortion, is available to buy on Amazon.  www.thelightfromdeadstars.com & www.stephenjansen.com

Sue Seddon began writing quirky travel and guide books for publication. She progressed to performing “the rude bits” and discovered entertaining. Along came alter egos Gran the Gusset Tester, West End Wendy and Nigella Ladylumps, all fighting for the spotlight. Sue now
roadies, does the costumes, gets Gran out of fights and off the milk stout, dispenses with the collection of rough crumpet Wendy is trying to take home and prevents Nigella from litigatious assertions that she can cook.  Sue’s books, performance reviews and collection of associates The Thursday Girls can be seen on www.sueseddon.co.uk and on youtube.

This month, Blackpool’s Dead Good Poets celebrate three years of working together as a collective of writers. Originally writing and performing as a student group at Blackpool & Fylde College, the group have taken their work into the local community with regular open mic nights, school workshops and enormously successful fancy dress events. They are represented at Word Soup this month by Shaun Brookes, Lara Clayton, Stephen Stroud, Vicky Ellis, Lindsay Barlow, and Ashley R. Lister.

Word Soup: Friendship – Thursday 26^th January 2012 – 8pm – £3 on the door – priceless entertainment –

The Continental, South Meadow Lane, Preston PR1 8JP.