The postman, in this case, never rang at all

But he still brought the books, goshdarnit. This involved me lurking outside the tower block, leaping out at delivery vans and asking them if they had a crate of books in the back. Luckily I didn't intercept anyone's last-minute revision pack, but instead ended up with five boxes of shiny new copies of The Manchester Anthology.

And now the thunder's just hit. I feel like a mad professor who's just pulled the switch on the lightning generator to animate the monster. IT IS ALIVE. You can do your own manic laughter.

Anyway, here are the boxes. You get two camera angles, as if it's Jackie Chan leaping between rooftops.

I'm not ashamed to say that opening them felt a little bit Christmassy.

Actually, I haven't opened the other four boxes yet, so for all I know they contain dismembered pets. But I'm going to be optimistic and say they look much the same. 

Walking to the mail

In which Alec wishes he had a much snazzier camera on his telephone.

For today there was post, and it was good. I'm now clutching the advance proof of the anthology. Okay, I'm not clutching it right now, because I'm typing, but it's very near. Because a picture tells a thousand words (although I don't know if the MA marking scheme would accept fifteen photographs in place of a dissertation), here are pictures, hopefully not accidentally including any of my cat.

These are the covers, looking like a book. Unfortunately the right-hand side of the front cover has been slightly dodgily trimmed, so some of the text is, like an embittered television detective, close to the edge. Not sure if there's anything that can be done about this.

Look, it has three dimensions! Just like a conventional visual perception of the universe.



Pages can be read using eyes and turned using hands. Yes, that is a pile of change in the corner of the first photograph. It's my desk, and I am male. Therefore.

A real human thing reading the anthology. I have it on good authority that he enjoyed it. 

The anthology, on a bookshelf, looking like a real book alongside some arbitrarily selected novels that I'm sure bear no connection to the Manchester creative writing MA.

Sorry about all that. I'm quite excited.

In other news, the full set of author pictures and biographies has been added to the blog, so you can browse our lovely people here.

Jeremy White

Jeremy White grew up on a farm in the southern United States. Before moving to Manchester, he received a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Georgia and worked in book publishing. ‘Don Juan’s Harem’, featured in the anthology, is an adapted extract from a longer work-in-progress.

jeremykwhite AT gmail.com

Barnaby Walsh

Barney Walsh has a master’s degree in theoretical physics and a bachelor’s in English literature. He lives in the north of England.

barneywalsh AT hotmail.com

Jane Verity

Jane Verity grew up in Armley, Leeds. She studied English Literature at Durham University and worked for three years as press officer at West Yorkshire Playhouse. Her short story ‘Sunday’ was shortlisted for the Cadaverine Ilkley Literature Festival Young Writers Award 2009. She took part in West Yorkshire Playhouse’s So You Want To Be A Writer? scheme in 2009.

jlverity AT gmail.com

Emily Talbot

Emily is 21 years old and lives in London. She first came to writing creatively during an undergraduate degree in Philosophy and Literature at the University of Warwick. Her passion grew from there, and after obtaining high marks for a number of pieces of work she applied for the MA in creative writing at Manchester, where she is currently studying. She enjoys writing social realist fiction and her particular passion is capturing, in essence, how people interact with each other. Emily is working on a novel, based on life in post-Second World War Ireland.

etalbot89 AT gmail.com

Colin J Stewart

Colin J Stewart has had stories, poetry and articles published in half a dozen obscure writing journals. He has won or placed in equally obscure contests for fiction, speeches, slam poetry and math. His greatest literary achievement was having a poem framed on the wall of a $1.50-a-slice pizza joint in Vancouver. His first novel, A Question of Extremes, is about utilitarian vigilantes; he self-published it in 2007. His second novel, to be released at some point in the future, is about a man’s jealousy for his wife and son.