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.

You may have already read about it, but today Kate Manchizzle and I launch a website we’ve been working together on: Rainy City Stories. It’s been fun flexing my web developing muscles on something creative and Manc-centric, and we’re both happy with what we’ve produced:

We’ve created an interactive literary cityscape that enables you to click on a location in Manchester and read a story or poem set there. To start the project off we’re commissioning site-specific stories from some of the area’s most exciting established writers, but you can tell us your own story too.

There are already four stories up from these commissioned writers – Nicholas Royle, Rajeev Balasubramanyam, Mike Duff and Jackie Kay – and they’re based around a good spread of locations: Moss Nook, Chorlton, Victoria Station and Whalley Range.

We’ve also had several submissions from the public, which’ll be going up very soon too. While it’s been mostly short stories so far, we’re also hoping for plenty of poetry submissions – and maybe even some multimedia stuff (photo stories, comic strips, audio, video etc). Click here to submit your own story to the map.

There’ll be more commissioned work added to Rainy City Stories in 2009, plus workshops and live lit events. If you’re interested in receiving updates about these – and in reading new Mancunian literature – please subscribe via RSS, email or Twitter.

Rainy City Stories is part of the Manchester Literature Festival, which begins next Thursday, and is supported by Arts Council England. I’d really appreciate any feedback, either as a comment here or on the RCS site itself.

I haven’t unveiled the literature project I’m currently working on yet, partly because there’s so much happening in the city right now. More on that soon – but for now here are a couple of brand new things for those literary of heart.

Today Manchester University’s Centre for New Writing launches an online journal, The Manchester Review. As well as a cracking name, it’s got a great exclusive: the first chapter of Booker Prize-winner John Banville’s forthcoming novel The Sinking City. No wonder the Guardian’s Books section made it Site of the Week.

Issue one of the biannual journal features 16 pieces in total, from a short extract of one of Chris Killen’s poems to a video of RNCM composition teacher Larry Groves’ setting of a poem for contemporary music and theatre ensemble Psappha. And that’s not a one-off, with ‘a mix of new music, public debate, visual art and video as well as fiction and poetry’ promised for future issues.

Also at/near the university today, a poetry night called The Other Room is taking place in The Old Abbey Inn (the lesser-known Kro) on Pencroft Way from 7pm. It’s organised by the same people who run the Openned experimental poetry website, which I wrote about in January.

Tonight’s free event features David Annwn, Caroline Bergvall and Joy as Tiresome Vandalism.

So last night was great – just the right mix of people, music, alcohol, readings… even the lighting was perfect. Personal highlights were Sally Cook’s first ever reading (it didn’t show at all), Socrates Adams-Florou and his laptop, Richard Barrett’s hilarious (in the right way) poems, John McAuliffe’s David Gaffney’s anti-PowerPoint short stories (done incredibly creatively on PowerPoint) and Tao Lin’s video readings. Well done Sally and Chris, and bring on October’s installment.

Things seem to be picking up in the Manchester literature world even before the literature festival begins on 16 October. This Saturday, for example, the Friends’ Meeting House next to Central Library hosts this event:

Inspiring workshops and panel discussions about the short story and all its forms with guests author and screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce, writer and poet David Constantine, author and playwright Elizabeth Baines, publisher and short story specialist Ra Page and producer/director Polly Thomas, who commissions short stories for BBC Radio.

Anyone who loves to read short stories or would like to know more about writing for publication or radio is welcome.

The event, supported by local publisher Comma Press and the National Story Campaign, runs from 1-5pm and tickets cost £8 – call Rose or Libby on 0161 234 1317 or email r.ryan@manchester.gov.uk if you’re interested. You can also download the full programme and booking form here.