CityLife

Rainy City Love Stories

Photo by Greg Chabrol

IT might be the country's most famous rainy city, but Manchester is about to prove that it can make the most out of its wet and windy weather.

The city now has very own online storyscape, Rainy City Stories, and the website is continuing its bid to get the city scribbling and this time, its aiming straight for the heart.

In honour of Valentine’s Day, organisers are running a competition for the best love story or poem they receive before 10 February.

Book voucher

The winning piece of writing will be published online and the winner will receive a £50 book voucher donated by the Manchester Literature Festival.

The project launched in October as part of the Festival with commissioned work from respected Manchester writers, such as Nicholas Royle, Jackie Kay and Mike Duff.

Since then, it’s gone from strength to strength with scores of submissions from established and aspiring local writers.

Map

The site uses an interactive map of the city to link stories to specific locations. Visitors can click on an area of the map marked with a rain cloud to get a literary snapshot of the effect that site has on the local imagination.

Submissions can be fact or fiction, poetry or prose. The only criteria are that they have to be linked to a mappable location in Manchester, previously unpublished and manageably short.

Follow the link to the right of the page for more details and to visit the site.