Category Archives: live lit
Lit Live Night Frensham. June 22nd, 7.30
Stroud Short Stories is Open for Submissions until 8 March 2020
Stroud Short Stories is currently open for submissions for its special 20th event which is dedicated to Stroud writer Rick Vick who sadly died at the end of November. There were obituaries for Rick in The Times and The Guardian. Here is the latter.The event is for all Gloucestershire and South Gloucestershire writers. The theme this time is DISRUPTION. Submissions are free and you may submit unpublished or published stories. Ten stories will be selected and their authors will read/perform them at our event.
The deadline is the end of Sunday 8 March and the event is on Sunday 19 April at the 150-seater Cotswold Playhouse. Tickets will go on sale on 20 March.
All information about submitting is on the Stroud Short Stories website.
Story Friday LEAP! Call for submissions
Story Friday in February has the theme LEAP! in celebration of 2020 as a leap year. Story Friday is on 28th February, the day before the leaping day, and we want to revel in the glory of this springing theme! Whether your stories feature proposals or boxing hares, Christmas lords or death defying jumps, we are so looking forward to reading what you come up with!
Story Friday LEAP! will be on 28th February, deadline for submissions is 17th February. We’re looking for stories that are 2,000 words or fewer. (Full submission details are here). Writers must be available to come to Bath for the event. If you’d rather not read, we have wonderful actors who can read your story for you.
For more information about Story Friday, to listen to stories that we have recorded at our events over the years, and/or to submit your story please visit A Word In Your Ear.
Talking Tales #26 – 10th December – Bristol
Talking Tales is open for submissions for the next event on Tuesday 10th December 2019.
Here is our manifesto:
- the ‘To Hull and Back Anthology 2019‘ will be launched on the night
- many of the authors featured in the anthology will be reading
- you could read too – this time stories of 500 words might get our vote
- The Right Honourable Christopher Fielden will be the Leader of the House
- we pledge you will laugh and be entertained in equal measure
Ta
lking Tales is a lovely night of stories, with a warm audience in a great venue. If this sounds like your kind of party then put pen to paper and vote with your feet.
Submissions close late on Friday 29th November 2019 – send your stories by e-mail to: stokescroftwriters@gmail.com
Event details – are stupendously straight-forward:
…venue: Left Bank, 128 Cheltenham Road, Stokes Croft, Bristol BS6 5RW
…time: we start at 6:30 pm on Tuesday 10th December 2019
…join-in: the ‘finish the lines’ competition – win a Talking Tales badge.
Stokes Croft Writers would love to see you there.
P.S. It’s #26 – no recounts.
Spooky stories for grown ups
Are you brave enough to listen to Halloween tales in a haunted Folkestone bar?
The ghosts of Eleto Chocolate Cafe, Rendevous Street, are once again hosting Hand of Doom’s Spooky Stories for Grown Ups on Saturday, October 26.
Come and and hear some monstrous, terrifying and silly tales from 8pm.
Drinks are available from the bar. Competition during the interval to win some ghoulishly cheap treats.
Tickets cost £6 and are available on the door or from Ticket Source.
WONDER- seeking short story writers for a candlelit immersive live lit event PLUS FREE writing workshop!
White Rabbit is Bernadette Russell and Gareth Brierley- a multi award-winning arts organisation which creates films, podcasts, theatre and immersive live lit /storytelling events.
We are writers and performers who are passionate about stories and storytelling. We are delighted to be working with Revelation in Ashford to create two immersive live lit evenings of short stories on the theme of WONDER.
We are inviting short story submissions inspired by the theme of WONDER, with a maximum of 1500 words in any style. Priority will be given to Kent writers or writers with an association with Kent.
We will select stories from the submissions to be performed live on two consecutive evenings by our team of professional actors, in the candlelit environment of the beautiful and ancient St Mary’ Church (referenced in the Doomsday Book in 1086!).
We look forward to this event being a great opportunity for Kent writers to showcase their work. As writers you need do no more than submit your work, once it is selected then you can come along to the event, relax and enjoy the show!
Deadlines for submissions are: Midnight on 14th February 2020. Please submit your stories on the theme of WONDER to gbbrierley@btinternet.com with the subject heading WONDER. Please ensure your name is on each page of your story (in the header or footer if possible)
The shows are 21st and 22nd March 2020 at 7.30pm.
We are also hosting two FREE writing and performing workshops- the first being on 9th November- a chance to be inspired by the beautiful church and graveyard and to have a space to write! Details are here
Our website is currently under re-construction- so in the meantime please visit this link for further information and FAQ: https://www.bernadetterussell.com/single-post/2019/10/10/WONDER–FAQ-for-writers
If you would like to see a film of previous storytelling events please go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogo9Pl6LSCE
This project has been commissioned by Revelation Ashford and is supported by Ashford Borough Council, Arts Council England, Kent County Council and Music Venues Alliance
Story Friday Chemistry – we want your stories!
After a lovely long summer and story walks in the sun, Story Fridays is back inside, at Burdall’s Yard in Bath. Our next event in November has the theme Chemistry. Are you thinking of bunsen burners, or eyes meeting across a crowded room? Whatever you choose, chemistry is all about reactions, explosive or otherwise. We can’t wait to see where our latest theme takes you!
Story Friday Chemistry will be on 8th November, deadline for submissions is 28th October. We’re looking for stories that are 2,000 words or fewer. (Full submission details are here). Writers must be available to come to Bath for the event. If you’d rather not read, we have wonderful actors who can read your story for you.
For more information about Story Friday, to listen to stories that we have recorded at our events over the years, and/or to submit your story please visit A Word In Your Ear.
Words That Go Bump in the Night – Warwick Live Lit!
Let us creep a little closer to Hallowe’en courtesy of Words That Go Bump in the Night – a spooky live lit event at the Warwick Arms Hotel, Jury Street, Warwick, on Thursday 10th of October. Be part of our invited audience and enjoy some exceptional 5 minute stories, poems and plays all with a ghostly, other-wordly theme. Run by author Jenny Heap, her Words Of events have been playing both Spring and Autumn seasons to ever growing audiences and participants. If you’ve never attended a Words Of live lit event before come along to Words That Go Bump In The Night on the 10th of October to hear some great writing from local authors. 7.30pm and £3 on the door. See you there!
Untitled Writers’ Salon #3
Find out more about Untitled here
FREE tickets can be reserved here
Following the success of the second Untitled Writers’ Salon back in July, we are back with the third in the series on November 7 as we welcome ten writers to The Curtain in London. Tickets are now available to attend the Salon as our wonderful audience!
Untitled is a new platform for underrepresented writers to share their work in front of a live audience. We welcome all writers who self identity as underrepresented.
There are no limitations to what might be shared and we know there’ll be something for everyone in this safe and intimate space. The evening will be co-hosted by writers Ollie Charles and Shiri Shah.
Untitled events will be collecting donations in support of akt, working for safe homes and better futures for LGBT+ young people.
Doors open: 7.15pm for a 7.45pm start in the Design Studio at The Curtain, 45 Curtain Rd, EC2A 3PT
Please ensure you enter through the members entrance on Scrutton St between Curtain Rd and Phipp St, not via the hotel entrance.
To find out more about Untitled, email us at contact.untitledwriting@gmail.com.
If you are interested in reading at a future event, please do get in touch!
Please note this event is 18+
Stroud Short Stories is open for submissions until 29 September 2019
Stroud Short Stories is open until the end of Sunday 29 September for submissions from Gloucestershire and South Gloucestershire writers.
It’s free to submit and we will select ten stories to be read by their authors at our 19th event on Sunday 10 November at the 150-seater Cotswold Playhouse. Our last 13 events have all sold out.
The event is part of the 2019 Stroud Book Festival.
It’s an open theme this time so any subject matter, any style so long as it’s a short story of no more than 1,500 words.
Information about our rules and how to submit is on the SSS website.
Tickets, priced at £8, go on sale on the Playhouse website on 11 October.
Short Shorts Friday
Talking Tales #24 – 20th August – Bristol
Talking Tales is open for submissions for its flash fiction special event on 20th August. What’s special about it? You’re going to be there and you’re going to be reading.
If that seems a little presumptuous, let me explain. The flash fiction special is celebrating the art of very short stories, poems and all other forms of creative writing. We have an upper limit of 300 words and we have confidence in you.
We believe in your writing – whatever form that may take. We believe in your ability to knock our socks off at the beginning, the middle or the end. We believe you know that Talking Tales is a lovely night of stories, with a warm audience in a great venue. And we believe…this is the important bit…that between the tennis, the barbecue, the warm Summer nights, the paddling and the 99s – we believe you’ll pull your digits out and give us 300 of your best by 9th August (submissions close then).
Hosted by the awesome Christopher Fielden who will also be launching two of his writing challenge anthologies on the night. Are you in them? If not, there’s no excuse not to be in the next ones.
E-mail your submissions (300 words or less) to: stokescroftwriters@gmail.com
Event details – are stupendously straight-forward:
…venue: Left Bank, 128 Cheltenham Road, Stokes Croft, Bristol BS6 5RW
…time: we start at 7pm on Tuesday 20th August 19 – doors open at 6.30
…join-in: the ‘finish the lines’ competition – win a Talking Tales badge.
Stokes Croft Writers would love to see you there.
Plug into FaxFiction
Old technology – we all used it, and it’s still there: cassette tapes, floppy discs, videos, 35mm slides, overhead projectors, Ansaphones, games consoles, View-Masters, faxes, Dictaphones, reel to reel, Ceefax… How did we function with these ancient machines, these relics of the future?
Hopefully these six writers hold the answer: Writer-in-Residence at Manchester’s Victoria Baths Sarah-Clare Conlon, Sawn-off Tales author David Gaffney, John Rylands Library Writer-in-Residence Rosie Garland, Creative Writing lecturer Valerie O’Riordan, Bad Language host Fat Roland and Nicholas Royle, series editor of Best British Short Stories.
FAXFICTION 2019
In FaxFiction, six brand-new short stories will focus on old technologies, and will each be performed using artefacts gathered especially for the event. Made uniquely for the Refract:19 festival, which takes place annually at Greater Manchester arts centre Waterside, this unique show on Saturday 27 July will also feature the live premiere of an installation commissioned from sound artist Gary Fisher.
Tickets cost £8 (£6 concessions) – book here.
Liars’ League: INFINITY & BEYOND short stories, Tuesday 11th June
WE HAVE LIFT-OFF! Liars’ League‘s sci-fi-flavoured special to commemorate 50 years since the moon landings features five forward-looking stories exploring the ultimate theme. Teleport into The Phoenix, Cavendish Square on Tuesday 11th June to experience deep space, time-travel tourism, cryogenics gone wrong, vanishing clones, astronautical ambitions and a terrifying game of Murder in the Dark …
INFINITY & BEYOND WINNING STORIES
London 2025 by Wan Shinfah NEW AUTHOR, read by Cliff Chapman
Proxima Centauri by Oliver Parkes NEW AUTHOR, read by Greg Page
How to be an Astronaut by Alice Franklin, read by Gloria Sanders
The Martlet by Abigail Lee, read by Lois Tucker
Frozen Futures by Rhys Timson, read by Tony Bell
Usual NASA rules apply: doors open at 7pm for a 7.30 start and tickets are £5 on the door (currently cash only, sorry, but there’s a cashpoint 2 minutes away). Entry includes a programme, participation in our infamous book quiz where fantastic science fiction can be won, and of course all the Flying Saucers you can eat. Drinks and food are available at the bar throughout. There’s no pre-booking, but tables for four or more can be reserved by calling 07808 939535.
The venue is the downstairs bar at: The Phoenix Pub, 37 Cavendish Square, London W1G 0PP
Accessibility note: Access to the basement is via stairs: there’s no lift, sadly. The Phoenix is 5 minutes’ walk from Oxford Circus tube station, which is on the Victoria, Bakerloo and Central lines
The Hunters Grimm- a storyhunting show in the streets of London
Bernadette Russell of White Rabbit joins the wonderful Teatro Vivo cast in “The Hunters Grimm” a promenade performance in the streets of Catford and Stratford, London,aiding Jacob and Wilhem Grimm along with their companion Dot Wilde, in their search for a story of hope with a happy ending. Such stories seem in short supply in our troubled times….
The Hunters Grimm on the streets
Come and join us on our search! Who knows who you might meet on the way: a beggar Prince, Rapunzel now working in sheltered housing as a single mum, a young jobseeker in pursuit of 12 dancing princesses, a hungry wolf reminiscing about his glory days as a restaurant critic, a step mother who needs a Kardashian make over….and many more
Dates are:
Stratford- 30th May- 1st June- please go here for more details and tickets
Catford- 6th-16th June- please go here for more details and tickets
For a tantilising taster go here
South London Festivals with Arachne Press
Early summer is the time for festivals in South London, and this year Arachne Press has pulled out all the stops to hit as many as we can.
We are once again taking part in the lovely Hither Green Festival (they ask us, this is so rare, and so good for the ego!)
Saturday May 18th 7pm at one of our favourite venues,
Manor House Library, on Old Road SE13 5SY
FREE Readings of stories and poems based in the past – from the 17th to the 20th Century – life stories and imagined lives, followed by a fairly short discussion about writing from history – what inspired the piece, what research was needed, how was the story shaped by the facts and which got in the way – that sort of thing.
Poetry: Kate Foley and Math Jones
Short Stories Joan Taylor-Rowan, Rebecca Skipwith, Katy Darby
Cherry Potts will read from her novel in progress.
We are involved in BrockleyMAX Festival again this year, with stories and poetry in a brewery…
Wednesday 5th June 7pm
We will be at the lovely Brockley Brewery, 31 Harcourt Road London SE4 2AJ
for NOON
FREE Readings of poetry and short stories on the theme of Noon from the Solstice Shorts Anthology of the same name.
Everyone thinks of noon as being a split second as the clock’s hands draw together, the bell tolls twelve times – but there is so much more to it than that.
with Stuart McKenzie, Michelle Penn, Laila Sumpton, Marika Joseph, Liam Hogan, reading their own work and possibly that of others featured in the book.
10am on Saturday 15th June (Flash Fiction Day) we are joining Greenwich Book Festival for the first time, when editors Rosamund Davies, Cherry Potts and Kam Rehal will be doing a pre-publication panel discussion on Story Cities at Room KW003 King William Court Greenwich University Old Naval College Park Row Greenwich SE10 9LS. We are assuming you will need at ticket, but they aren’t on the festival website yet.
Tonight – Short Shorts Friday
Today, Friday April 26th – an evening of short story reading with Anne Aylor, Roelof Bakker, Alan Franks, Charles Harris, Jowonder and Jan Woolf at Pentameters theatre, 28 Heath St (entrance Oriel Place, Hampstead, London NW3 6TE. 8pm. £10 on the door.
Stroud Short Stories ‘Incendiary!’ Sunday 19 May – Tickets on Sale
Tickets are now on sale for the 18th Stroud Short Stories event Incendiary! on Sunday 19 May –
https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/date/638976
Tickets are priced as usual at £8. The event, at our new venue, the 150-seater Cotswold Playhouse, Parliament Street, Stroud, GL5 1LW, starts at 8pm (doors 7.30).
Ten Gloucestershire authors will be reading their stories about fire, heat, passion, anger and rebellion selected from the 113 stories submitted.
The authors are –
Robin Booth
Joanna Campbell
Louise Elliman
Michael Hurst
Jason Jackson
Emma Kernahan
Geoff Mead
Chloe Turner
Steve Wheeler (aka Steven John)
Alwin Wiederhold
All info on the Stroud Short Stories website
Liars’ League BEFORE & AFTER story readings – this Tuesday April 9th
As Brexit looms (or does it? who knows …?!) long-running, award-winning live literature legends Liars’ League have selected six superb stories of choice & change to take your mind off it all at our BEFORE & AFTER show on Tuesday 9th April. There are escapes & tippingpoints, cats & cows, sex & death, poetry & fistfights, yoga & porn, the Berlin Wall & a fishtank full of ghosts. And it’s STILL only £5 entry, which includes a programme, our infamous book quiz, and free birthday cake because we’re 12 🙂
WINNING STORIES for BEFORE & AFTER
Last Rites by Jess Worsdale, read by David Mildon
Namaste Bitches by Ana Soria, read by Keleigh Wolf
Counterfiction by Tim Aldrich, read by Tim Larkfield
The Poetry of Jenny by Gerard McKeown, read by Zach Harrison
No East or West by Mark Sadler, read by Silas Hawkins
Olena’s Scalpel by Alan Graham, read by Patsy Prince
Doors open at 7pm for a 7.30 start and tickets are a fiver on the door (currently cash only, sorry, but there’s a cashpoint across the street). Drinks and food are available at the bar throughout. There’s no pre-booking, but tables for four or more can be reserved by calling 07808 939535.
The venue is the downstairs bar at: The Phoenix Pub, 37 Cavendish Square, London W1G 0PP
Accessibility note: Access to the basement is via stairs: there’s no lift, sadly. The Phoenix is 5 minutes’ walk from Oxford Circus tube station, which is on the Victoria, Bakerloo and Central lines.
P.S. Want to submit a story for our next event, Infinity & Beyond? Deadline is Sunday 5th May and all the details are here.
Story Friday The Garden – Call for Submissions
Story Friday in May has the theme The Garden. I don’t know about where you are, but here in Bath the blossom is blooming, the tulips are budding and spring is definitely springing. So take a stroll down the garden path and let your imagination fly.
Story Friday The Garden will be on 3rd May, deadline for submissions is 22nd April. That’s very soon, so get writing! We’re looking for stories that are 2,000 words or fewer. (Full submission details are here). Writers must be available to come to Bath for the event. If you’d rather not read, we have wonderful actors who can read your story for you.
For more information about Story Friday, to listen to stories that we have recorded at our events over the years, and/or to submit your story please visit A Word In Your Ear.
ShortStops 