The programme for Unbound is out so it’s time to tell you about our next event! Unbound is the Edinburgh International Book Festival‘s late-night Spiegeltent series.

Writers’ Bloc will be performing Electric Lit Orchestra on Tuesday 23rd August 2011, 9-11pm in the Spiegeltent in Charlotte Square. Here’s what the Unbound brochure says:

Electric Lit Orchestra

Why should the story stop when the band comes on? This local ‘spoken word performance collective’ are modern day champions of the often overlooked Scottish literary tradition – the fantastique. Edinburgh collective Writers’ Bloc presents an evening of new fiction about, and set to, music. Expect hidden nightclubs and soul trades, celestial harmonies and ram raids in this event where anything literal could literally happen.

Unbound events happen every night from 14 to 29 August in the Spiegeltent in Charlotte Square Gardens as part of the Edinburgh International Book Festival. All Unbound events are FREE and unticketed. To get in, simply turn up and walk in. All events start at 9pm so arrive early to get a seat and the bar will be open until 1am.

There are some great events in Unbound, so pick up your programme in The Skinny, or check out Unbound on the EIBF website.

Another quick shout-out for Inky Fingers. This month’s Open Mic night features comrade Jane alongside the multi-talented Alan Bissett.

Inky Fingers Open Mic featuring Jane McKie and Alan Bissett
Tuesday 28th June, 8 – 11pm, Forest Café, FREE

We want to hear from everybody. We want your poems, your rants, your ballads, your short stories, your diaries, your experimental texts, your heart, your mind, your body. We want the essay on your summer holidays you wrote when you were four, your adolescent haiku, and extracts from your eventually-to-be-completed epic fantasy quadrilogy. We want to hear your best new work as well. And we want people to care about the way words are performed.

Our featured performers this month are Jane McKie, award-winning poet and Knucker Press publisher, and Alan Bissett, novelist, playwright, and all-round banterer.

More details at http://inkyfingersedinburgh.wordpress.com

Our fellow travellers over at Inky Fingers have two reminders this week:

Inky Fingers Readeasy
Thursday 9th June (sign up by the 8th!), 6 – 9pm, Forest Action Room, FREE

The READeasy Writers’ Group is a safe and encouraging space for writers to meet up, hear their words read, and get constructive critical feedback. It’s open to writers of any style, experience, identity and genre — but places each month are limited. See the Writers’ Group page for full instructions (including length limits).

Inky Fingers August Minifest
Deadline for Proposals: Friday 10th June

Calling writers, performers, poets, storytellers, spoken word artistes, linguistic experimenters, and everyone who cares about putting beautiful words in a beautiful order!

Inky Fingers, Edinburgh’s live-lit organising collective, is programming a spectacular wordly mini-fest at the Forest Café, 8th – 13th August 2011, and is looking for proposed events and readings from writers around the country.

Check the Minifest Callout for full details and send in your ideas by Friday!

Mr Big Society is tonight: 8pm at the Wee Red Bar, Edinburgh College of Art. If you move quickly you can still book your ticket online for a discount and a free Mr Big Society badge. Or, it’s £4/£2 on the door.

Bloc is presenting an all-new illustrated Mr Men story, featuring appearances by several characters you may not remember from the first time round. Other stories feature improvised weaponry in Asda, warring troops of worthy youth organisations, William Burroughs, rooftop gardens, eerie doors, rage, and Edinburgh City Council. The lineup is:

Gavin Inglis reads Mr Big Society
Stuart Wallace reads Break On Through
Morag Edward reads Eat Your Greens
Helen Jackson reads Banana Republic

Gavin Inglis reads Mr Big Society
Bram E. Gieben reads Small Utopias
Mark Harding reads 28 Minutes Later

Gavin Inglis reads Mr Big Society
Andrew C . Ferguson reads Die Hard by George
Kirsti Wishart reads Operation Fairycake

It’s the last day of the Guardian Edinburgh blog. We’ll miss you, Guardian Edinburgh!

On this final day, Comrade Mo has contributed a piece about Bloc’s history and happenings in the run-up to next week’s Mr Big Society show: Edinburgh Writers’ Bloc confronts Mr Big Society.

(If you buy your tickets online now for “one of Edinburgh’s wittiest nights out” you’ll get a free Mr Big Society badge on the night! Or, there’ll be plenty of tickets on the door.)

And, in other Edinburgh news, it seems that the Big Society is headquartered on Leith Walk:

Big Society | Originally uploaded by HellyBelly

The People’s Commissariat has authorised production of a limited number of Writers’ Bloc badges.

If you’d like to demonstrate your allegiance to the Bloc, badges will be on sale at all our events. Or, even better, get a Mr Big Society badge free by buying your ticket online for the Mr Big Society show.

In an unprecendented multiple adoption process, the Writers’ Bloc spoken word collective has expanded again.

Following on from their successful guest slots at Bloc’s Wee Red Gig last year, we would like to welcome our new comrades Bram E Gieben, Helen Jackson, Mark Harding and Stuart Wallace, who will be formally presented to you at ‘Mr Big Society’, The Wee Red Bar on Wednesday, June 1st. 
 
Bram E Gieben is a writer, poet, musician, critic and emusic label curator. He is one of the founders of The Skinny, a member of Chemical Poets, and recently launched the new spoken-word night ‘Blind Poetics’ at, strangely enough, The Blind Poet.

Helen Jackson is a recovering architect, animator and short story writer. She’s already upgraded the Bloc website so we are even more technologically amazing than before.

Mark Harding of Mutation Press, is a journalist, reviewer and short story writer. And he dances. Last year Mark published ‘Music for Another World’ an athology of strange fiction on the theme of music.

Last but definitely not least, Stuart Wallace is a journalist, fiction writer, scriptwriter and experienced Edinburgh Fringe performer. In 2010 he was a guest author in Story Shop at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
 
We think you’re going to enjoy their stories…

Follow the adventures of Mr Big Society and his friends!

Yes, it’s the Writers’ Bloc contribution to the big debate of our time. All the things you really wanted to know about The Big Society but were just too sensible to ask.

Original, unscholarly research on the key economic questions: What happens if you literally pay peanuts? What happens when ‘Fairy Cakes for Fire Engines’ collides with ‘Lemoncake for Lifeboats’? Is The Big Society fact or fable? Bird or plane? Can you return it if it’s the wrong size? Will Mr Big Society, Mr Banker, Little Miss Librarian, Mr Jihad and all the other friends have the best time ever? Or will there be tears before bedtime?

A revolution of the Public Services and Charity Sector – what could possibly go wrong? Or to be more accurate, what could impossibly go wrong?

The Writers’ Bloc Think Tank will present a night of unlikely social policy – short stories that blur all distinction between fact, fiction, sense, nonsense, inaccuracy, good ideas and bonkers brainstorming sessions.

Having trouble understanding The Big Society? Just wait until we’ve finished! *

Writers appearing at Mr Big Society will include: Morag Edward, Andrew C. Ferguson, Gavin Inglis, Jane McKie, Andrew J. Wilson and Kirsti Wishart plus new comrades Bram E Gieben, Mark Harding, Helen Jackson and Stuart Wallace.

8pm, Wednesday 1st June 2011, Wee Red Bar, Edinburgh College of Art, EH3 9DF. Admission is an affordable £3 if you book your ticket online, or £4 (£2 concessions) on the door.

Newsflash: Writers’ Bloc bribery scandal. Buy your Mr Big Society ticket online through WeGotTickets and receive a limited-edition Mr Big Society badge on the night. Possibly in a brown envelope.

* Not approved by the IMF, OECD or The Institute for Economic Affairs.

Comrade Mark’s Mutation Press has a new project! ROCKET SCIENCE is an anthology of hard SF, edited by Ian Sales. There’s an open call for short stories and essays. You’ll find detailed guidelines on the Mutation Press website. (Contributions that don’t follow the guidelines don’t stand a chance.)

Good luck with your submissions!

And congratulations to comrade Hannu, whose debut novel ‘The Quantum Thief’, published in the UK by Gollancz last year, will be released in the US by Tor in 2011 – watch this space!

This is what Charlie had to say about the book:

If you dropped Greg Egan’s hard physics chops into a rebooted Finnish version of Al Reynolds with the writing talent of a Ted Chiang you’d begin to get a rough approximation of the scale of his talent. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up when I read it. Hard to admit, but I think he’s better at this stuff than I am. And The Quantum Thief is the best first SF novel I’ve read in many years — Charles Stross

Now that is praise!