Find out what’s new with the Manchester Creative Writing Society and how you can get involved

Book Editor Yasmin Mannan selects four breathtaking pieces of poetry, and each sharpens, yet blunts the edge, of what it is to be alive

Solin Hanna gives a glowing review of the YA novel The Sea of Tranquility by Katja Millay

A quick glance at upcoming writing competitions, including cash prizes for the financially-challenged student

A taste of those beloved books that were just too edgy for the censors

Ali Pearson reviews The Autobiography of Malcolm X, carving out its significance in the world of modern race-relations in the US

Book Editor Yasmin Mannan investigates how the Young London Poet Laureate, Warsan Shire, has been exposing the suffering of refugees through the written word for years

With March being Women’s History Month, Leonie Dunn looks at five of the top feminist works from manifestos to fiction

An introduction to medieval literature by Izzie Bowen

Why Oscar Wilde’s letter is the perfect reason why the 49000 men convicted of the ‘gross indecency’ law should be pardoned

A short story about the events that ensue after a near-death experience

Intensely readable and relatable, Hawaiian Shirts in the Electric Chair reaches out to the disengaged and apathetic—with a trace of hope

Not for the faint-hearted, Kiedis reveals his innermost sins in one of the most explosive rock autobiographies ever written

Are you a keen publisher, writer or filmmaker? Then check out Great Worqs, the new and innovative publishing platform

Leonie Dunn observes Wolf Hall, the television adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s award winning novels, and BBC2’s most successful drama in over a decade

Five authors who changed their names, and the supposed reasons why

340 years after John Milton’s death, Leonie Dunn considers Milton’s epic portrayal of the Fall of Man

The Historian Magazine will this week be releasing a special issue called ‘Lessons from History: The Delhi Belly Interest Rates of 1858’

A list of the top five romantic reads just in time for Valentine’s Day

No Komodo dragons were harmed in the writing of this story