ROCH-TALES: new writing for Rochdale
Roch-Tales was a literature commissioning and community story-making project for Rochdale in 2026 culminating in a performance event at the Ukrainian Club Rochdale on 9 July, hosted by poet Sarah-Clare Conlon.
The project featured seven free creative writing workshops across all 5 boroughs of Rochdale, six brand-new commissions from authors Abid Hynes, Benjamin Judge, David Gaffney, Nicholas Royle, Reshma Ruia and Rosie Garland a sound installation from Rochdale artist Maryanne Royle, and a final performance with open mike
Here some pictures from the final event - pictures by ace West Yorks based photographer, Nic Chapman - the first two images are of people listening to the sound installation, in case you wondered.
Abi Hynes is an award-winning drama and fiction writer based in Manchester. Her first collection of short stories, Monstrous Longing, published by Dahlia Books, was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize 2024, and she won the Cambridge Short Story Prize in 2020.
She also writes for stage and screen. She was on the Brit List in 2022, and recently adapted ANNE OF GREEN GABLES for Audible, which starred Catherine O’Hara, Victor Garber and Sandra Oh. Her plays have been staged in theatres across the UK, and she is currently developing a number of original dramas for TV.
Abi Hynes is an award-winning drama and fiction writer based in Manchester. Her first collection of short stories, Monstrous Longing, published by Dahlia Books, was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize 2024, and she won the Cambridge Short Story Prize in 2020.
She also writes for stage and screen. She was on the Brit List in 2022, and recently adapted ANNE OF GREEN GABLES for Audible, which starred Catherine O’Hara, Victor Garber and Sandra Oh. Her plays have been staged in theatres across the UK, and she is currently developing a number of original dramas for TV.
Reshma Ruia is the author of two novels, Something Black in the Lentil Soup, and Still Lives, winner of the 2023 Diverse Book Readers’ Choice Award and longlisted for the 2023 Peoples Book Award. She has published a poetry collection, A Dinner Party in the Home Counties, winner of the 2019 Word Masala Award and a short story collection, Mrs Pinto Drives to Happiness, shortlisted for the 2022 Eastern Eye ACTA Award. Her poetry and fiction has been commissioned by the BBC, Manchester Literature Festival and University of Cumbria among others. She is the co-founder of The Whole Kahani, a writers’ collective of British South Asian writers and a trustee of Manchester City of Literature board.
ROSIE GARLAND has a passion for language nurtured by public libraries, and a firm belief in the power of persistence. She writes poetry, fiction, song lyrics & is lead singer of post-punk band The March Violets. Her work has featured in The Guardian, Mslexia, Bronte Parsonage Museum and commissions include Tate Modern and Whitworth Art Gallery Manchester. Latest collection, 'This Is How I Fight' (Nine Arches Press) was The Observer Poetry Book of the Month for June 2025. Val McDermid has named her one of the UK's most compelling LGBT+ writers, & in 2023 she was made Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature. Abi Hynes is an award-winning drama and fiction writer based in Manchester. Her first collection of short stories, Monstrous Longing, published by Dahlia Books, was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize 2024, and she won the Cambridge Short Story Prize in 2020. She also writes for stage and screen. She was on the Brit List in 2022, and recently adapted ANNE OF GREEN GABLES for Audible, which starred Catherine O’Hara, Victor Garber and Sandra Oh. Her plays have been staged in theatres across the UK, and she is currently developing a number of original dramas for TV.
David Gaffney lives in Manchester. He is a writer with a specialism in short stories and prose poetry. He has published widely and collaborated with artists working in many different art forms. He is the author of three novels, most recently Out Of The Dark (2022), plus a number of short story collections, as well as several graphic novels with Dan Berry, most recently Rivers (2021). His collection of short stories, Concrete Fields, (Salt 2023) was longlisted for the Edgehill prize and his collection of prose poetry Whale was published in 2024 on Osmosis press David also has many years’ experience of managing arts projects, several of which have been Arts Council funded, including Destroy PowerPoint, a show which David took to Edinburgh Festival, Boy You Turn Me, a sound installation for Birmingham Book Festival, Men Who Like Women Who Smell of Their Jobs an arts exhibition at The John Rylands Library with visual artist Alison Erika Forde, Show Don’t Tell a live graphic novel project for Lakes International Comic Art Festival in 2023 and Stockport Stories in 2024.
Nicholas Royle is the author of five short story collections – Mortality, Ornithology, The Dummy and Other Uncanny Stories, London Gothic and Manchester Uncanny – and seven novels, most recently First Novel. In 2009 he founded Nightjar Press, which publishes original short stories as limited-edition chapbooks. He has edited more than two dozen anthologies and is series editor of Best British Short Stories for Salt publishing
Benjamin Judge is a writer of short fiction and non-fiction who has lived in Littleborough for twenty years. He is a graduate of the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester. He is also an editor who has worked with several writers on short story collections that have been longlisted and shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. His creative non-fiction story, Drinking Coffee with my Father in the Most Expensive Cafe in Manchester won the Real Story Prize.