We’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who helped to make the 2011 Manchester Literature Festival our most successful to date (nearly 7000 people attended 70 events). We are busy planning this year’s festival (provisional dates 8 – 21 October 2012). We’ll also be co-ordinating a number of preview events and projects, including the Midland Future Manchester Young People’s Writing Competition, in the lead up to next year’s festival – so watch this space or join our mailing list to keep up with the latest news.

If you want to find out what you missed at this year’s festival or relive your favourite events you can read our guest blog reviews, listen to Simon Savidge’s special MLF edition of The Readers podcast, download PDFs of newly commissioned work by Patricia Duncker, Andrew Motion, Michael Symmons Roberts and Jean Sprackland, read and listen to podcasts of the winning stories in The Real Story competition, and watch films of our Sacred Hearts event at Manchester Cathedral, plus Bjarte Breiteig and Thijs de Boer reading their newly translated stories at MLF below.

For a witty run down of the 2011 MLF programme you can also watch the video below of the specially commissioned poem Travellers Tales by Kate Fox, performed at the festival press launch.