We name this book…

 

Popping our cork. As it were.

 

….BUGGED!  The first of our two launches took place today in Manchester, where we were honoured to open the Manchester Literature Festival programme. Our readers came down from Edinburgh, up from London, east from

 

The littlest Bugger of all

 

Wales, west from Derby… they were Jenn Ashworth (right, with McTiny), Cathy Bryant, Dorothy Burgess, Emma Morgan, Susannah Hart, Emma Lannie, Liz Loxley, Ian Marchant, Lynsey May, Angi Holden, Alicia Ogg, Calum Kerr, Valerie O’Riordan and Phil Williams. Every one observed our dire warning to stick to a 3-minute reading – although for the prose writers this sometimes meant cutting their work in half. We made’em laugh, we made’em cry, and most importantly we made’em buy books.

We’re not finished yet – we opened Manchester Literature Festival, and we close the Birmingham Book Festival next Thursday evening at the Ikon Gallery. Programme Director, Sara Beadle writes:

“The Birmingham Book Festival was very excited by the initial idea of Bugged. It remains one of the most fresh and inventive writing projects we’ve heard of. The Birmingham Book Festival focuses on interesting ideas and writers who think, write and talk about the things that are really challenging in our times and relevant in our lives. This year’s programme is no exception, with the likes of Fatima Bhutto, Gareth Peirce, Dominic Sandbrook, David Shukman, John Lanchester, Jonathan Coe, and Lionel Shriver amongst a cast of many others. Aside from the authors we are featuring, there is also a broad workshop programme (including a dark afternoon within Ikon Eastside’s new installation,  Hitchcock’s Hallway), and events in partnership with The Drum, Punch Records, Birmingham Libraries, The RSA, SHOUT Festival and 7 Inch Cinema.”

“It is our pleasure to close our eleventh Festival with the launch of the anthology and we can’t wait to hear the results of this eavesdropping experiment. We are sure that an evening with Bugged and its writers will prove hilarious and no doubt moving, if the early indications are anything to go by. We have watched in admiration as the project has gathered momentum and are proud to be hosting a public celebration of its success.”

Want a copy of the book? Here’s how.

• The best way is to buy it direct at the Birmingham launch. No postage!
• Or… order direct from us to get the special edition version (chunkier, nicer, quicker – and the same price) until we run out. If you submitted work to Bugged – whether you are in the book or not – the price is £4.99, plus postage. If you didn’t, it’s £5.99 and serve you right! Email submit@bugged.org.uk and let us know how many you want, where to send them, and whether you want to pay by PayPal or cheque.
• Once we’ve run out of special edition copies, buy the standard version (lighter in weight, but still lovely) at the same price from CompletelyNovel or Amazon – ignore the ‘out of stock’ warning, which appears because it’s a print-on-demand book. If you order from these sources, you’ll be waiting longer for your book – about a fortnight… but it’s still a gem!

Now then…. Birmingham, are you ready for us?

And now, the end is nigh….

…..or at least, the submission date is nigh. Last-minute submissions are coming in and this time, the choice has been not just difficult but heartbreaking. We have had so much good stuff that we can’t post it all. But all is not lost… read on to find out what will happen to those just-missed submissions.

Bleak but heartfelt

It’s the twelfth of August and we have an appropriately Glorious choice of work, in a bumper selection called with our usual style August 12th. Click on that date to find work from Emma Morgan, Valerie O’Riordan, Val Thompson, Catriona Child and Susannah Hart. Here we have blindness, mutilation, drunkenness and racism in one happy bundle.

What happens between the submissions closing on Sunday, and the launch of the Bugged book on October 14th in Manchester (or 21st in Birmingham)? Will we disappear into the ether? Will we Bugger, dear Buggers. This blog will shift its focus. We will continue to post your work, and we have contributions from Stuart Maconie and Jenn Ashworth up our sleeve. But we’d also like to make it more of a forum for you. We’ll showcase some of your websites and blogs; highlight interesting sites for writers and readers, resources or organisations for writers at all levels, and live literature shows where we can meet up in the real world. Since our main Bugged groupings seem to be in London, Birmingham and the North West, we’d love to hear of forthcoming events there. We also want to hear from some of you about your writing processes, and how Bugged has changed them or shaken them up. What would you like us to include? Post your ideas here on the blog via comments, or on our Facebook or Twitter pages.

We still have a little pile of Bugged prizes to give – so there will be more writing challenges to come. The closing date for submissions is Sunday, at noon. If you are cutting it close, be extra sure that you’ve saved the submission form in Word, that you’ve put all your details on it including your Earth address, and that you send it to submit@bugged.org.uk.

We’ll sit down next week with a pile of print-outs, a bottle of gin and a pair of loaded pistols to decide on who will appear in the Bugged book. It will be processed and printed at CompletelyNovel, and we will have physical copies in October. We would love to send one to all who appear in it, but we just can’t – we had to fund Bugged privately so you’ll have to cough up for your own! But we will do our damnedest to make it affordable and attractive.

Tune in on Sunday for the final pre-closure selection. This is not the end, but it is a good moment to say THANK YOU. We hoped that Bugged would bring together experienced and novice writers in a shared guilty pleasure, and it already has. According to you we are ‘inspired and inspirational’ – we have ‘reminded you to listen to the world around you’ and ‘given you permission to creep about listening to people.’ It is frankly a wonder that none of you have been arrested. If you’re looking for something to relax with after writing your piece, why not treat yourself to a copy of David Calcutt’s new book The Map of Marvels?