This year’s Manchester Literature Festival launched yesterday and while my involvement, Rainy City Stories, is ticking along nicely (7,000 views and a very healthy number of stories submitted in its first seven days), there are of course plenty of real-life events worth checking out between now and 26 October:

Past Crimes – Historical crime writers Lee Jackson, Andrew Martin and Anne Perry talk about their work in the ’suitably gothic’ surroundings of the John Ryland’s Library. Today, Friday, 7pm. Free

Between the Panels – An illustrated discuss with a panel of three graphic novelists. Whitworth Art Gallery, Sunday 19 October, 3pm. £4/£3

School of Manchester – A demonstration of the city’s strength in literature education, as three graduates – including Joe Stretch – talk about their debut novels. The Deaf Institute, Sunday 19 October, 7.30pm. £5/£3

Portico Prize Preview – Featuring shortlisted authors from the biennial Portico Prize for a book set mainly in northern England. Manchester Central Library (pity it’s not at the Portico library…), Wednesday 22 October, 1pm. Free

Manchester Blog Awards – The third annual blog awards, for which Mancubist is nominated, this year feature a new award, CityLife Blog of the Year. Matt & Phred’s Jazz Club, Wednesday 22 October, 7pm. Tickets £3/£2

Comma Film Premiere – Five new films adapted from short stories published in the North West, plus the film-makers and writers explaining the adaptation process. Cornerhouse, Thursday 23 October, 6.30pm. £4/£3

It looks like you’re writing a letter – Ross Sutherland and Tim Clare give a lecture on the relationship between language and mathematics, bizarrely. Followed by Tony Walsh’s Zeroes and Ones, which ‘compresses 14 billion years of science and philosophy into one byte-sized poem’. Museum of Science and Industry, Sunday 26 October, 2pm. £5/£3

And those are just select highlights! Pick up one of the ridiculously bright brochures – or visit the festival website – for the full programme. Well done to Cathy and Jon for putting such a substantial festival together, and for using more than just the usual venues.

Kate announced the shortlist for this year’s Manchester Blog Awards earlier today:

We had 107 separate nominations this year, coming in from as far away as San Francisco. There was such a wealth of great stuff that it was harder than ever to do the shortlisting, particularly in the Best Writing on a Blog category (by far our most nominated-for).

Best New Blog:

Dear Kitty
Coco LaVerne
Follow The Yellow Brick Road
14sandwiches

Best Writing on a Blog:

Diary of a Bluestocking
Every day I lie a little
Nine chains to the moon
Chicken and Pies

Best Arts and Culture Blog:

Scatterdrum
Quit This Pampered Town
Northernnights
Max Dunbar

Best Personal Blog:

Travels with my baby
Single Mother on the Verge
Follow the Yellow Brick Road
40three

Best Neighbourhood Blog:

Hyde Daily Photo
Mancubist
Lady Levenshulme
Manchester Bus

There are plenty of good blogs in the shortlist – and loads of new names too, which is obviously great to see. I’ll be checking out my competition in the new neighbourhood category over the next couple of days… (thanks for the nomination).

Judges this year are the MEN’s online editor Sarah Hartley, MDDA’s Dave Carter and Chris Killen, who writes Days of Moustaches and runs No Point in Not Being Friends.

The Manchester Blog Awards event takes place on Wednesday 22 October, again at Matt & Phred’s on Tib Street. If you like music and literature with just a hint of geekdom, do come down.

‘There’s no point in not being friends with someone if you want to be friends with them.’ It’s a mantra I first spotted on Facebook, and I assumed it was a campaign against denying friend requests on various social networking sites. Hey, maybe it is?

Either way, it’s also the fullest name of No Point in Not Being Friends, a monthly literature (that’s poetry and prose) event that takes place at the Deaf Institute. Here’s more about the 23 September event, tomorrow:

The third night is in the Upstairs Music Hall of the Deaf Institute (new Trof), off Oxford Road. Joe Stretch, David Gaffney, John McAuliffe, and Jenn Ashworth will be reading, along with lots of other scheduled and open-mic readers, and the American writer Tao Lin will be doing the ‘video reading’.

Stretch – singer in local electro band Performance and writer-in-residence at Manchester University’s Centre for New Writing – has had plenty of exposure lately, and Lin’s video reading should be interesting.

The event is inspired by New York’s underground literature scene and there’s a big lit-blog connection too – including through organisers Sally Cook and Chris Killen, Ashworth, who reviewed July’s event, and the event’s own dedicated blog. It’s also on MySpace, so practically every base is covered.

No Point in Not Being Friends kicks off at 8pm and is free. Check out Katie Popperwell’s article on the new-look CityLife website for more information and an interview with Cook.

And while we’re on the subject of Manchester lit, today’s Metro flagged up a free showcase of work by the Centre for New Writing’s PhD students, which takes place in the Committee Room of the Central Library at 1pm on Wednesday 24 September.

As if in response to Julie’s recent plea for the city’s bloggers to emerge from the woodwork, Kate over at the vacationing Manchizzle has just announced details of the third annual Manchester Blog Awards.

The event’s format has worked well (I would say that, wouldn’t i?) but this year Kate’s refreshing things a bit by dropping the Best Political Blog category (so 2006/7…) and bringing in Best Neighbourhood Blog, to recognise a growing number of locale-specific blogs such as Mini Manchester and Roblog.

The awards, backed by the Manchester Literature Festival and Manchester Digital Development Agency, will take place on Wednesday 22 October back at Matt & Phreds on Tib Street. There’ll be readings by local bloggers including Chris Killen from Day of Moustaches, plus DJing from Manchester’s music bloggers (full information here).

In the meantime, voting is open until Thursday 18 September – so email mancblogawards AT googlemail.com, clearly stating your name, where you live, the name and url of of the blog(s) you’re nominating and which category or categories you’re nominating for. Check out the Manchizzle post for everything that you need to know, including details of who qualifies.

That’s the question posed by Julie Delvaux over at her Notebooks – Los Cuadernos de Julia blog. A year or two ago there were semi-regular events organised by and for Manchester’s blogging community – but in 2008 not even a quiet pint in a dingy pub (the Castle has shut down, after all).

Julie wants to right that wrong and is therefore appealing for anyone interested in going to a monthly/bi-monthly event to get in touch. Craig McGinty and several other Manchester bloggers have already posted comments in response, and a September date is in the offing.

Sarah Hartley over at the MEN’s The Mancunian Way blog has mentioned it too, in post explaining a new initiative she has just set up. Starting this week, she’s going to be highlighting some of Manchester’s ‘internet stars’ – people who have blogs or websites in some way connected to the city.

The profiles, including of this week’s www.manchester-blog.com, will go online as well as in the Saturday edition’s e-view section – so if you want to nominate yourself or someone else, email Sarah now.