Writing platform for Manchester to launch

Bloggers Kate Feld (Manchizzle) and Chris Horkan (Mancubist) are launching a new online project this week – Rainy City Stories.
“Manchester is a city made of stories – some have long been forgotten, some have never been told and some have yet to be written. We’re excited to announce the launch of the Rainy City Stories project, which invites readers to engage with their city in a new way, opening up a hidden landscape of fact and fiction” says Kate.
“To start things off, we’ve commissioned works from some of the city’s best and brightest authors: Jackie Kay, Mike Duff, Nicholas Royle and Rajeev Balasubramanyam. We will be publishing more commissioned work in 2009, and expanding our site to inlude photography, graphics, and audio and video readings to accompany the words.”
Rainy City Stories uses open-source technology to publish new writing where Manchester is the setting. It uses a Google map of the city to organise stories linked to particular places. Readers can click on a place marked by the little cloud icon to read a piece of writing associated with that spot.
The website goes live on Thursday, Oct. 9 at www.rainycitystories.com and is part of the 2008 Manchester Literature Festival.
After the site launches, anyone will be able to submit their own unpublished short stories, poems or bits of memoir for inclusion on the literary map of the city. Kate and Chris are expecting work from some of the students in Manchester’s prestigious writing schools, from the city’s talented pool of literary bloggers and from people who might not have had an outlet for their writing before.
For more information, visit the website.
A series of related writing workshops and a live literature event featuring some of the Rainy City Stories writers will be part of the 2009 Manchester Literature Festival. The project is funded by Arts Council England.