Corinne Fowler (editor) - Postcolonial Manchester: Diaspora space and the devolution of literary culture

This book is dedicated to
PETER KALU
and all those who have worked for
Commonword and Cultureword over the years

This volume is the final output of the funded research project, Moving Manchester: How migration has informed writing in Greater Manchester, 1960 the present (200610) and the project team would like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council for their generous support. Many organizations, groups and individuals have also been crucial to the success of the project (see Acknowledgements) which owes its existence to Manchesters distinctive, polycultural writing scene. Indeed, the reason our funding-bid focused on Manchester was on account of numerous funding bodies and literature development workers sending us in the direction of Commonword, the Manchester-based literature development agency and community publisher which has been operating in the city since the 1970s. Although by no means all the texts discussed in this study are Commonword titles (the organization supports several publishing imprints), our research endorses Lemn Sissays observation that theres not a Manchester black writer who has not, in the past twenty years, been through Cultureword [the branch of Commonword dedicated to black writing], and arguably very few white writers who have not in some way benefited from the organizations presence in the city. It is in recognition of this achievement that we dedicate