We’re back! Like so many of us, Commonword’s had to take a few months during this pandemic moment to take care of our staff, find new ways to work and to support our many, many writers, both new to the game and old hands.
We’ve missed seeing you in person in our workshops and readings and book launches. But we’ve still been here, online, keeping our workshops going; launching new collections like Shots in the Dark II, a black crime writing anthology; Loose Connections, an aural collection from Identity, our long-running black writers’ workshop; launching our 40-years-strong Archive, with its map of Manchester writing featured in this newsletter; a novelists’ group focussed on getting more black writers published; hosting Queer Black Book Club and its fun, incisive sessions on classic and brand-new queer black writing.
You can see how to join Identity and Queer Black Book Club in this newsletter, and watch this space for details of how to join the novelists’ group soon.
The Newsletter is back! And Commonword has never really been away.
All the best,
Cheryl Martin
Co-Artistic Director
Updates
Commonword National Black Writers’ Conference
Dates: 20th & 21st November, 2021
This year, our National Black Writers’ Conference is going to be all-virtual, and panellists, workshop leaders and performers will be all-female-identifying.
And everybody is welcome to view, to listen, to learn, to talk to the panellists.
The Conference draws together the various strands of Commonword/ Cultureword’s creative writing development work, allowing us to share it, showcase it, and invite national feedback and critical debate around it. Plus showcase a lot of hot black talent.
Coming your way weekend of 20th – 21st November, 2021.
Watch this space!
Explore our Literature Map of Manchester
Commonword Cultureword has worked with hundreds of Manchester’s writers since our founding in 1977. You can explore the literature that has taken roots and writers who have flourished across the city in our Digital Literature Map. Each point on the map has been chosen based on references to the location within a text, where the writer composed a piece or a location in Manchester evoked by a piece.
Commonword's Picture Book Project with Hachette is now up and running. In March, Emma Layfield of Hachette Children's Group gave a presentation to 50 North based writers of colour who are interested in developing a picture book for 3 to 5 year olds. Throughout April we ran 1 to 1 Zoom sessions with (so far) fifteen writers looking at their proposals and giving advice and signposting resources. Some wonderful stories are emerging.
Workshops
Black Queer Book Club
A reading group for people who are both LGBTQ+ and from Global Majority communities [ie, African, Caribbean, Southeast, South, East Asian, Middle Eastern Diaspora communities, as well as Indigenous communities]
May's book: Lote by shola von reinhold
Meeting: 6.30 - 8.30pm, Thursday 27th May 2021 on Zoom
Our book for May is Lote, by shola von reinhold [they] – very queer indeed, inserting queer black folks back into histories from which we’ve been erased. It’s just been nominated for the#JamesTaitBlack Prizes - the longest-running #book prizes in the UK for #fiction and #biography - chase the hashtags on Twitter.
And you can get a head start on our book for 24th June: Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi, about two generations of Nigerian women and the love that binds them.
If you would like to attend, please email cheryl@cultureword.org.uk or join our Facebook group by clickinghere.
Identity welcomes all writers from the Global Majority [ie, African, Caribbean, Southeast, South, East Asian, Middle Eastern Diaspora communities, as well as Indigenous communities], whatever you write.
Every Wednesday (currently on Zoom).
To find out more or to join, email info@cultureword.org.uk
Eat, Sleep, Read, Repeat
Every fortnight we will be sharing a review of a recently published book by a black writer to help you deck out your bookshelves with fresh literature.
This week’s review if of “A Lover’s Discourse” by Xiaolu Guo which Pete describes as “One of the wittiest books I have ever read”!
Subscribe to our Youtube channel to be notified when new reviews are released.
You can pick up a new read from one of Commonword’s writers at our bookshop.
This month we are spotlighting “ A House with No Angels” by Muli Amaye, a novel about intergenerational family conflict against a backdrop of England and Nigeria. Described as 'Skilfully crafted and impossible to put down' by Hakim Adi (Historian of Africa and the African Diaspora).
Pick up a copy for £8.99.
