A Liverpool based publisher is looking for new writers to contribute to a series of books to celebrate the city's 800th birthday. Mersey Minis is a five volume anthology of accumulated writings about Liverpool which will be published throughout 2007. The series is made up of Liverpool-specific writing, with each volume based around a specific theme: Landing, Living, Loving, Leaving and Longing. The first four volumes in the series are anthologies of accumulated writing from a variety of sources – from Dickens to Defoe, Tracey Emin to Will Self. The writings span the last 800 years – from the year when Liverpool first received its charter from King John. The fifth volume, based around the theme of ‘Longing’, will be made up of new writing which will be selected from submissions made in a competition launched by the publisher, Capsica. | "Everybody across the world knows about Liverpool, and that’s really reflected in the work that we have been able to include." | |
Fiona Shaw is the director of Capsica. What's the scale of the competition? We wanted to publish a series to celebrate Liverpool’s 800th birthday in August, but as part of that we really want to get together a new body of current writing but new writers. It means that the series is not just about nostalgia, but is forward-looking too. We want a diverse as possible spectrum of people to represent Liverpool as it celebrates being 800 years old. And the theme is ‘Longing’? Can that be taken any which way? Yes, it’s just supposed to be really broad and general. The pieces have to be between 50 and 500 words so we’re looking for something quite succinct, vivid, and passionate… The emphasis is not on perfect grammatical correctness, just strength of voice. Longing gives flexibility, you could talk about anything within that. We know a lot of people who haven’t even been to Liverpool but have a really strong mental picture of it, whether it’s through music or football or relatives who have emigrated here - for all sort of different reasons. It could be a particularly strong memory from childhood, it could be something that you feel now about how the city is changing, it could be just whatever you think about when you think of Liverpool. So could it be fiction, or is it strictly non fiction? It’s all non-fiction - prose, no poetry. So we’re looking for descriptive stuff which is clearly rooted in Liverpool. That’s the one main criteron. It has to be distinctively Liverpool. I know that you’ve talked about some of the writers and themes that you have included in the other volumes. It is a massive body of work, but can you think of any writing that particularly stands out as your favourite so far? There’s one piece that stands out for me by the conductor Libor Peschek - it’s really passionate and really emotional. He says something along the lines of ‘When I came to Liverpool I was a broken man and I had a troubled soul, and Liverpool was troubled and broken… but Liverpool fell in love with me and I fell in love with Liverpool - and it healed me and made me love again’. It’s great, it just makes you so proud of Liverpool - to have all this range of people. Some of them are dead funny - there’s Brian Labone quote which goes something along the lines of ‘Yeah, Liverpool, great city and I really love it. There’s only one problem with it. It should have been called Everton’. Is this a project that you think will work particularly well in Liverpool, or would you get the same thing in any city in the UK? I think potentially you could do it in any city but I would say it works particularly well in Liverpool. Because of Liverpool’s unique place as the main port from the United States at the turn of the last century there is a huge amount of really famous American writers, then obviously all of the musicians coming and going… there are lots of very famous people. But then some of the most interesting stuff is from people you’ve never ever heard of – we have transcribed testaments from escaped slaves, for example.
Everybody across the world knows about Liverpool, and that’s really reflected in the work that we have been able to include. So how can people get involved in the competition? They can log onto our website - www.merseyminis.com. That will give you all of the information you need to make a start. You can download the application form and rules from there. We will be running a series of writing workshops around Merseyside, two of which will take place at the BBC Radio Merseyside building on Hanover Street. To take part in one of the BBC sessions all you need to do is to book with BBC Radio Merseyside's A Team on 0151 794 0984. Numbers are restricted though, so it will be first come, first served! BBC 'Mersey Mini' storytelling workshops: Tuesday 1st May 5:30pm Thursday 7th June 11:00am Call 0151 794 0984 to book your place. | 
