This is where we’ll put all of our news about story updates, Manchester literature events – including our forthcoming writing workshops – and related projects. You can stay fully tuned by joining our Facebook group or subscribing to Rainy City Stories via RSS, email or Twitter.

December 18, 2009 – The Rainy City Stories logo you see above was given a Gold medal in the 2009 Fresh Creative Awards (see page 77 of this pdf). Thanks to Manchester’s own Mark Studio for their excellent design work

November 2, 2009 – Rainy City Stories is featured on the Guardian’s Books Podcast this week! If you want to listen, its the last item, which starts around 26 minutes in. Guardian Literary Editor Claire Armitstead called it “one of the most imaginative (Manchester Literature) Festival projects” she’s heard of.

October 21, 2009 – We’ve just published our first set of Rainy City Stories podcasts – click here to listen to them.

September 3, 2009 -  We’ve had a busy summer filled with reading and writing and publishing more Rainy City Stories. We like this one-story-or-poem-a-week schedule. It feels right to us. But if we’re going to keep it up we need some more submissions, and stocks are running low. So if you’ve been sitting on a piece of Manchester-based writing, hemming and hawing about sending it to us, send it in!

Loads to tell you about…  Our June creative writing workshops were a roaring success. All booked up fast and the feedback was uniformly very positive. We think that’s entirely down to the considerable talents of writer Suzanne Batty, who led these workshops.  (Suzanne is doing a more extensive workshop for experienced writers October 17 & 18  in connection with the Angels of Anarchy exhibition.)

We are currently waiting to hear back on some grant applications but hope we’ll be able to put together a new programme of RCS workshops before too long. Until then, we are offering one workshop during the Manchester Literature Festival: Writer David Gaffney is doing a “writing about place” workshop for Rainy City Stories on Saturday 24 October from 11:30-1:30 at Friends Meeting House in Manchester (£5/£3).

Right now we’re busy recording some RCS writers reading their stories for a podcast that will follow a walking route in the city centre. We’ll be launching the podcast with a live promenade event featuring readings on site, starting at 1pm on Tuesday October 20 from Urbis. Tickets will be very limted for this free event, so book early if you’re interested.

Tickets for both the writing workshop and the “Walking the Rain” tour can be booked on the Manchester Literature Festival site here, or by calling 0843 208 0500.

May  19, 2009 – Hey. We said there’d be workshops, didn’t we? So we’ve teamed up with the lovely folks at Commonword to offer a series of creative writing workshops just for you. The first Rainy City Stories writing workshops will be taking place across Greater Manchester in June. And somewhat unsurprisingly, the theme of these sessions will be “writing about place.”

How do the best writers successfully evoke the unique character of a place? How can  telling details be used to transport the reader to a particular setting? Writer Suzanne Batty will help writers explore new tactics and techniques in a two-hour workshop suitable for all flavours of writer, from underseasoned to extra spicy.

Suzanne has published two collections of poetry, most recently The barking Thing (Bloodaxe). She is an experienced workshop leader who teaches Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University and is co-editor of poetry journal Rain Dog.

Because we believe in freedom this workshop’s completely free, thanks to the generous support of our benefactor Arts Council England. But places are limited to twelve lucky people per session. So if you want in, book nowish.  There are four workshops:

Stockport Art Gallery Saturday June 13, 2-4 pm
To book ring 0161 474 4453

Bury Fusiliers’ Museum Wednesday June 24, 7-9 pm
To book ring 01706 823264

Hyde Library Thursday June 25, 1-3 pm
To book ring 0161 342 4450

Standish Library Saturday June 27, 10am-12pm
To book ring 01257 400496

In other news, we’ve had some great writing on the map lately. But we’ve noticed the skies over Levenshulme, that buzzing bastion of creativity, are remarkably clear. Weird, eh? Anyone out there want to send us something?

April 6, 2009 - Hurrah! After a long, dark winter, spring is slowly stealing over the city. Daffodils are pushing their way up through the empty crisp packets. And the writers of Manchester have been inspired. We’ve had some excellent work published on the site in the last couple of months – check out our archive if you want to catch up.

We had our first ever Rainy City Stories writing workshop at Body Positive in Whalley Range, and it was a big success. Thanks to Cathy Bolton, workshop leader extraordinaire, for a great afternoon, and Arts About Manchester for organising the day as part of their Open City Project.

We’re teaming up with  Commonword to run some more workshops around Greater Manchester in June, and have even more planned for the Manchester Literature Festival in October.  The idea is to get folks thinking about how we look at place, and do some writing about places in the city that are significant to them. They’ll be free workshops open to the general public and suitable for all flavours of writer, from the total newbie to the seasoned pro.  We’ll tell you more when we have everything all ironed out.  And please let us know if you’re interested in having us come in and do a workshop with your community group, school or organisation.

February 13, 2009 – It’s almost Valentines’s Day, and we can report that our Rainy City Love Stories contest was a roaring success. In a single month we received 56 stories, poems and bits of writing spanning every imaginable kind of love. We read romances involving snakes, bees, cats, superheroes, ghosts and the Man City squad.  To find out which made the shortlist, and who eventually won, click here.

February 5, 2009 – The love contest is proving to be very popular, with dozens of mentions on blogs and literature sites, and in the media. As the deadline is fast approaching, we’ve started sifting through the entries so far. If you’re working on a story, please make sure it’s in by the close of business on February 10!

January 11, 2009 – We’ve launched a contest: Rainy City Love Stories. The deadline is February 10 and the winning entry will be published in time for Valentine’s Day, February 14. The writer will receive a £50 Borders gift voucher – so click here for more information and to submit your entry.

December 1, 2008 - It’s been a busy month here at the site. November brought cracking new short stories from Emma J. Lannie, Neil Campbell, Lee Ashworth, and Anne Beswick, and a new poem from Trevor Barnett. You can check out all of these by visiting our archive section, which is handily arranged by date.

We’ve received a flurry of new submissions following an outing to the live literature night No Point in Not Being Friends. So many thanks to all those who have submitted their work; please help us keep the site brimming with fresh content by harassing your writerly friends and relations to send us stuff. If you really want to get out there and help us spread the good word of Rainy City Stories, there are pdfs of posters, flyers and press releases we can send you. Just get in touch and we’ll load you up with all you need for some serious prosteletyzing. Hallelujah!

October 30, 2008 - Four spooky new things up on the site this week. We’ve got something of a night bus horror story from Jenn Ashworth, who also happens to be the winner of this year’s Manchester Blog Award for best writing (check out her blog Every Day I Lie a Little.) Also: a poem by Richard Barrett about a missed meeting at a city centre bar, Socrates Adams-Florou’s riff on Chinatown, and Ailsa Cox’s, Doors of Tunis, a cinematic story of a relationship ending on Oxford Road.

Submissions are still coming in, but they have slowed from the veritable flood of writing we had immediately following our launch. So if you’ve been dithering about whether or not to send us your story, don’t dither. We can’t wait to read it.

How’s our map looking? Well, the city centre and neighbourhoods to the south are filling up nicely, but the Northern area of the map remains blank. No Rainy City clouds in Prestwich, Failsworth or Crumpsall… not to mention Irlams O’ Th’ Height. Just putting that out there.

We’re also going to start sending out monthly Storygrams, which will feature a selection of recently published stories and news about the project. If you want to get these, be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed or add yourself to our email list. Happy haunting.

October 20, 2008 – This evening we published our first three public-submitted stories – in fact, two short stories and a poem. The poem’s by Jon Atkin, who helps run the Manchester Literature Festival – it’s very bittersweet, as you can read.

The longest story namechecks a Smiths song – Rusholme Ruffians – and is written by Matthew David Scott, who has one book published and another due in May 2009. The other, Thin Air, is written by Elinor Taylor, an English and creative writing student at Salford University. It’s based in Ancoats.

October 9, 2008 – The site has now launched! Thanks for all the feedback so far, and for the submissions we’ve already received. Rainy City Stories was mentioned in Metro and on the MEN’s The Mancunian Way blog – and there have also been over a dozen mentions on other blogs.