Events for aspiring writers come to Oldham

The Comma Press Writers Days will run from Friday October 8 to Saturday October 9 at Oldham Library and feature a range of sector experts and published writers.

The series launches on Friday with a poetry workshop hosted by Lisa O’Hare from 11am-12.30pm at Oldham library.

Lisa O’Hare’s debut poetry collection Lockdown Life, A Rollercoaster of Emotion was published in May this year. Her work has been featured on BBC Radio Manchester and has been published in a number of zines, anthologies and online journals.

The workshop will be followed by a ‘How to get published’ online panel event rom 6-9pm with Jazmine Linklater of Carcanet Press and Peter Kalu a novelist and the artistic director of Commonword, a writing development organisation based in the North West.

Pete Kalu has nine novels published in a range of genres, as well as short stories and poetry. His latest novel One Drop, is set to be published next year.

Jazmine Linklater has been the marketing and events manager at the publishers Carcanet Press since March 2018. She also sits on the editorial board of Broken Sleep Books, which publishes a range of pamphlets and collections by writers.

On Saturday the prize-winning novelist and short story author Lara Williams is holding an in-person writers’ workshop from 11am to 12.30pm at Oldham Library.

The workshop will centre around the advantages and challenges of writing in the second person. It will also look at short fiction by Lorrie Moore, Margaret Atwood and Junot Diaz.

Lara’s novel Supper Club, which was published in 2019, has been translated into six languages and won The Guardian’s Not The Booker prize.

Her debut short story collection Treats was published in 2016 and 2017 in the US under the title A Selfie As Big As The Ritz. The collection was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize and longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. Lara has a new novel coming next year

For more information on the events visit the Oldham Libraries Facebook page.