Manchester: One City, Many Voices

Overview

The Manchester Lit & Phil and MACFEST held a vibrant evening celebrating the power of words to bridge cultures, spark understanding, and illuminate the rich tapestry of our city.

Manchester: One City, Many Voices brought together a distinguished panel of poets whose award-winning works span continents, traditions, and lived experiences.

Through live readings and personal reflections our guest writers explored what diversity and inclusion truly means in a city shaped by migration, creativity, and community. Their stories – rooted in memory, identity, struggle, joy, and hope – offered a compelling portrait of Manchester as a place where many cultures not only coexist, but flourish.

This unique event invited audiences to reflect on the ways literature can build empathy and connection, celebrating Manchester as an exemplar of multiculturalism at its best. The audience were inspired, challenged, and uplifted by voices that reflect the city’s past, present, and ever-evolving future.

This was a free public event, designed to welcome audiences from all backgrounds and to highlight the unifying power of literature and the spoken word. There was time for discussion and questions to the poets.

One City, Many Voices brought together four writers – Nasima Bee, Nóra Blascsok, Pamela Galloway and Peter Kalu.

Nasima Bee is a performance poet, producer and creative practitioner who uses art as a means of activism and her work is an exploration of the everyday through a personal lens that connects to its audience through inquisition and conversation. Nasima focusses on the human, centring stories that are unheard, misrepresented or ignored.

Nóra Blascsók is a Hungarian poet based in Manchester and one of the Manchester Multilingual City Poets in 2025. Manchester Literature Festival and Manchester UNESCO City of Literature co-commissioned Nóra to create a new work responding to the themes of ’sanctuary’ and ’welcome.’ Her powerful and playful response is ‘Guernica Children’.

Pamela Galloway divides her time between Canada and Manchester having grown up in Longsight. Each of her two homes provides rich inspiration for her poetry, and she writes about the people she encounters in daily life and the landscapes around her.

Peter Kalu is a poet, fiction writer and playwright who grew up in Manchester. In 2024 he received the Society of Authors Travelling Scholarship award and his acclaimed lyrical essay-memoir collection Act Normal was published in 2025 by Hope Road. Much of his writing reflects the UK second-generation migrant experience.