short story writer, jazz poet, performer, workshop leader, member of Black Arts Alliance.

This website contains booking details, project information and examples of work.

Forthcoming appearances:

Monday 13th October: Reading at The Liverpool Poetry Cafe (Costa Coffee, Bold Street)

Windows Poets including Windows project co-ordinator Dave Ward, author of Candy and Jazz, Jambo and Tracts; Glyn Wright, writer in residence for Aldeburgh Poetry Festival and winner of the Aldeburgh Festival Prize; Dinesh Allirajah, founder member of Asian Voices, Asian Lives; Eleanor Rees, former Eric Gregory Award Winner and Poet in Residence for Chester Zoo; and poet, songwriter and performer Michelle Sakim.
7.30pm - 9.30pm
Free admission

Featured in Write On Liverpool photographic exhibition and sound installation at Liverpool Central Library (William Brown Street).

photo credit: Leila Romaya & Paul McCann

Write On Liverpool: 7^th November 2008 -31^st January 2009

A photographic and audio installation, which celebrates Liverpool’s rich literary heritage, reveals personal audio dialogue alongside intimate portraits of thirteen established Liverpool poets taken at locations across the city.

This collection gives an insight into the works and lives of some of Liverpool’s most renowned contemporary poets presented by artists Leila Romaya and Paul McCann.

Poets include: Adrian Henri, Brian Patten, Roger McGough, Paul Farley, Dave Ward, Levi Tafari, Deryn Rees Jones, Jamie McKendrick, Gladys Mary Cole, Dinesh Allirajah, Michael Murphy, Matt Simpson and Eleanor Rees

Launch Event and Reading at Picton Reading Room, Liverpool Central Library, 7^th November 2008, 2.30-4pm.  Free, but ticketed event please contact Leila@straycatmedia for further details.

 Supported by Capital of Culture and Arts Council, England

Bookings are being taken now for an Alhama Creative Holiday writing residential in July 2009. The week-long course is entitled Writing Fiction: the short story; it will run from Friday 3rd July in Alhama, Andalucia (half an hour from Granada); and the price of the course (inclusive of  accommodation, airport transfers, certain meals and organised excursions, but exclusive of flights) starts at £550. Email Alizon Brunning for further details.

Now available:

Ed. Maria Crossan & Eleanor ReesI

ntroduction by Eleanor Rees

Featuring:
Beryl Bainbridge, Brian Patten, Clive Barker, Frank Cottrell Boyce, Ramsey Campbell, Paul Farley, Margaret Murphy, Dinesh Allirajah, James Friel, and Tracy Aston.

A baby blown out of an upstairs window by a WWII bomb lives to hear others tell the tale…

A woman embarks on a long-term obsession with a city landmark, abandoning her lover for the Liver…

A bricklayer working on the foundations of a never-built cathedral becomes its evangelist, its full splendour soaring only in his mind…

Bringing together fiction from some of the city’s most celebrated writers, The Book of Liverpool traces the unique contours that decades of social and economic change can impress on a city. Set against key historical moments from the Second World War to the Capital of Culture year, these stories question what ‘belonging’ and ‘home’ mean in the Liverpudlian context, from the regenerated city centre to satellite suburbs, from the sparring cathedrals to the no-go concrete housing estates. Liverpool emerges in these short stories as a city in constant flux: haunted by ghosts, buoyed up by myths, and shifting with an ebb and flow like the Mersey itself.

photo by Tim Power

For further details and to order a copy online, click here

"Dinesh Allirajah’s story, ‘A Different Sky’...deftly connects the buying up of the city centre in the 90s with the first Gulf War." (Emma Unsworth,  Liverpool.com article)

Liverpool Daily Post feature

A Manner Of Speaking

OUT NOW - click on photo for details

Maps and Metaphors: writings by young writers from Bangladesh and United Kingdom [British Council Bangladesh ISBN 984-32-3342-5]  

'Out of Transformation' - Liverpool poetry in the 21st century essay by Peter Barry, in Writing Liverpool - essays and interviews (eds. Michael Murphy and Deryn Rees-Jones, Liverpool University Press, 2007. ISBN 978-1-84631-074-4) 

Available on-line

Readings of Dirty Feet On The Saint and Microdrama (both taken from A Manner of Speaking), recorded 19/10/05 at Cornerhouse, Manchester as part of series organised by Comma Press. Click here for audio.

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