Blah! Blah!! Blah!!! at Withington Public Hall Institute

A host of great writers serve up wonderful words to help Café Blah get set up in a new space after they were recently evicted from their Withington premises.

The event will be compèred by Sarah-Clare Conlon, who set up popular live literature and spoken word regular Verbose in its original spot at Fallow Cafe, almost ten years ago.

We can reveal that the readers will include purveyor of fine flash fiction David Gaffney, reading from his short short story pamphlet Whale, Professor of Poetry at the Centre for New Writing John McAuliffe, who just launched his latest collection National Gallery at Blackwell’s, Joey Francis and Tim Allen of Peter Barlow’s Cigarette, Steven Waling of Manchester Poets and Anna Percy of the newly reinvigorated Beatification (next one 28 November).

Joining them are Tom Jenks, of The Other Room avant-garde reading series, Jazmine Linklater of No Matter, Speakeasy host Steve Smythe, creative writing lecturer Alicia Rouverol, Manchester Critics Collective member Lydia Unsworth, Lenni Sanders of The Writing Squad, Broken Sleep Books poet Nóra Blascsók, Confingo contributor Nathan Bailey, and Manchester poet Pam Galloway.

A vital part of Manchester’s creative community, the folks at Café Blah regularly put on bands and DJs and sound artists and films and spoken word and art shows and all sorts of fabulous necessary cultural activity – scant days before their locks were unjustly changed, Blah co-hosted the third Party For The People and a literary quiz for the first-ever Withington Book Festival. This reading contributes to an ongoing campaign to make sure they can set up a new space and host many more.

All proceeds from the event go to the Save Café Blah fund. If you’d like to contribute to the #SaveCaféBlah fund, but can’t make this event (or you’d like to contribute more than £10pp), you can donate direct to Blah’s Just Giving crowdfunder via: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/savecafeblah