Join us in rounding off the year with a festive open mic event. Come with your poems, stories, tall tales and songs – Bar open from 6pm, event from 7. December 7th, Tranby Suite, Staff House

And some further dates for your diary (all events are free):

February 10th: Celebrating LGBT History month, members of the LGBT staff network present Famous Five, tale sof the five LGBT writers who have most stirred them. At Artlink … free. A bring a bottle event.

February 21st: Top British SciFi Writer Adam Roberts speaks about current trends in science fiction, and his new novel By Light Alone

March 8th: Award-winning biographer Sarah Bakewell talks with novelist Ray French about her innovative How to Live: A Life of Montaigne

March 20th: The poet Rick Holland speaks of his collaborative work, including with Brian Eno on their new album Drums Between the Bells

April 19th: The launch of what promises to be a major new crime series set on the streets of Hull, David Mark’s A Dark Winter

April 25th: Cat of Nine Tales brings new writings on cats to celebrate Dennis Low’s exhibition of photos of the stray cat world of Morocco. At Artlink

May 17th: Writing Hull. Crowning the season, writers from the MA Creative Writing programme present true-life tales of Hull and the region.

The Philip Larkin Centre attracts some of the very best writers to platform appearances in Hull – to excite readers, and make sure some of the very best writing keeps coming out of Hull. The Centre takes its name from Philip Larkin, one of the twentieth century’s foremost poets who anchored his life to the University of Hull. That Hull poetic tradition stretches back to Andrew Marvell, and forward through some of the top poets of our day. Poets explore the personal to find what is universal. From William Wilberforce onwards, Hull also has a pioneering history of driving the social agenda for change. We call on writers to help us envision and shape a fairer world which recognizes the transforming power of individual and collective stories.

News item: Under Travelling Skies: book, film and exhibition. Larkin25 Words Award winner 2011 

Cliff Forshaw’s proposal for a project involving writers and artists associated with the Larkin Centre, won the first Larkin25 Words Award.   Cliff will lead a project to produce a book of poems, prose, photographs and paintings responding to the theme of Larkin’s Hull. The book, accompanied by a short film and an exhibition of paintings, will feature work by poets Peter Didsbury, Christopher Reid, Carol Rumens, Maurice Rutherford, David Wheatley, novelist Ray French, poet and short-story writer Kath McKay, poets and painters John Wedgwood Clarke, Cliff Forshaw and Malcolm Watson, film-maker and visual artist Quentin Budworth, musician and writer Amanda Lowe, writer Mary Aherne, and Larkin scholar James Booth. Under Travelling  of Morocco. At Artlink. 

Skies will be launched in summer 2012 in Hull to coincide with the Humber Mouth Festival.