TICKETS PLEASE: STATIONSTORIES.COM GOES LIVE

Manchester has a vast literary community. Fitting all the writers into this city is like fitting the whale inside Jonah. It's ridiculous: we're spilling over with talented writers.

The latest brainchild of this amorphous mass of skilful scribes is something called Station Stories. It's a live literature event under the noses of the ticket inspectors and rubbish collectors at Piccadilly train station.

Those involved in this project just happen to be some of our favourite writers. They are:

- Aromabingo-calling audio-visual author David Gaffney (pictured);
- Intimacy-inducing award-winning Jenn Ashworth;
- Nightjar-opening prize-judge Nicholas Royle;
- Language-perverting Bookmunch-editing Peter Wild;
- House-felling horror-hammering Thomas Fletcher;
- Other-rooming format-buster Tom Jenks.

See the writers and their links here.

What we love about this event is the live element: as the punters receive their stories throughout the station, the writers will be involving unsuspecting members of the public.

Whether they can stop participants getting on the 3.25 to Doncaster in search of even more wild and spectacular stories is a different matter.

The Station Stories will be told over three days in May and you can book tickets here.

BLACKWELL MANCHESTER'S BLOG HAS ARRIVED

Apparently, there's this new thing called blogging and it's all the rage with the kids.

We'd been thinking about running a newsletter for a while, but it has been near impossible to pull off. That's because we're busy selling books to you, dear reader, or at the very least using all of our energy to look sneeringly upon your purchase before telling you to buy Pan by Knut Hamsun instead.

We thought we would try a blog instead. It's the 'in' thing. It's what Lady Gaga would have wanted.

Stay tuned. We promise not to be too wordsmithery or Lynn Truss-y. In the words of Hector from The History Boys:

"I would hate to turn out boys who, in later life, would claim to have a love of 'litretchure', or speak of the lure of 'language', and their love of 'woords'. 'Words' said in a way that's somehow... Welsh."

We love the Welsh. Some of our best friends are probably Welsh. Happy reading.