Stories wanted: STICKS & STONES

Sticks and stones/May break your bones… but we feel it’d be much more positive all round if instead they inspired you to send us some fantastic short fiction for our September event! Which is a roundabout way of saying that we’re after unpublished stories of between 800 and 2,000 words on the theme of Sticks & Stones.

Think walking-sticks, Pooh-sticks, joss-sticks, glo-sticks. Think standing stones, stepping stones, bladder stones, gemstones. As always, we invite you to interpret the theme as creatively as you like – and get your stories to us at liarsleagueleeds@gmail.com by the end of August 28.

The best will be brought to life by our amazing actors at a Liars’ League Leeds event later in September.

Stick it to us.

Ladies & Gentlemen, March 19, 2015

Liars’ League Leeds is delighted to present another night of marvellous storytelling. This Thursday, our Ladies & Gentlemen event takes you behind the scenes at the Coney Island freakshow, into the inner sanctum of the mysterious Cimmerian Club, to a romantic dinner-party for, uh, six, and up on stage for a stand-up’s worst nightmare…

For your entertainment and edification, we will be reading…

A Sideshow Story by Joe Saxon
Grim by Liam Hogan
The Comeback by Rosalind Stopps
The Cimmerian Club by Susan Carey
Knights Round A Table by Elizabeth Hopkinson

Also, FREE BOOKS! (if you are clever enough to triumph in our almost-famous half-time books quiz.)

You can find us at the wonderful Crowd of Favours pub on Harper Street, Leeds: https://www.facebook.com/TheCrowdOfFavours

Entry is FREE, FREE I tell you! Roll up on Thursday, March 19 from 7pm and – once we’re all sitting comfortably – we’ll get the stoytelling started at 7.30pm.

We’re back with a bang. See you there!

Liars’ League Leeds: back for good

WE. ARE. BACK.

Yes, we’re back and back for good. A lovely new venue – of which more later – but the same old Liars’ League: amazing actors bringing scintillating new short fiction to life.

Which means, of course, WE NEED YOUR STORIES!

We’re after original short fiction of 800 to 2,000 words on the theme of ‘Ladies & Gentlemen’. As ever, that theme is yours to do with as you please. Lollipop ladies in a gentlemen’s club? A gentleman’s personal gentleman and a lady of the night? From jury-boxes to jousting-lists, from public toilets to parliamentary protocol, hit us with your very best shot – just get it to us at liarsleagueleeds@gmail.com by midnight on Friday, March the 6th.

It’s good to be back. Looking forward to seeing you soon.

LL Leeds @ Wakefield LitFest: THE RETURN

Liars’ League Leeds returns! We’ll be performing at the star-studded Wakefield LitFest from 7.30pm onMonday, September 22 – and we’d love to have you there!

 

http://www.wakefieldlitfest.org.uk/events/76-the-liars-league

 

What have we got? Well, we’ve got dinosaurs on the Tube and the Paraguayan navy. We’ve got a troubled Texan who won’t drink her juice and a shifty shipbuilder who’s taking on Jack Dempsey. We’ve got a house full of bats and a squatter in the soft furnishings.

 

Best of all, we’ve got five incredible actors poised and ready to bring these stories to life.

 

Our writers for this comeback special include Katy Darby, Joan Taylor-Rowan, Liam Hogan and Richard Smyth.           

 

We really hope you can join us and help us come back with a bang. Wakefield’s beautiful Orangery is hosting us for the night (yes, there’s a bar); here’s how to find it: http://www.the-orangery.uk.net/contact_us/

 

The rest of the festival is definitely worth checking out too. Here’s the programme: http://www.wakefieldlitfest.org.uk/whatson

See you very soon. It’s good to be back.  

LL Leeds: ON HIATUS

Hello, world! LL Leeds has been woken from its hypersleep by this lovely plug in the Guardian,  in which we (as ever) piggyback on the reputation of our London big sister event.

We’re sorry to say, however, that LL Leeds remains in a state of suspended animation for now. WE MAY YET RETURN – and you, dear reader, will be the first to hear about it when we do.

Love,

Liars’ League Leeds    

On the road again…

There’ll be no Liars’ League Leeds in Leeds this month, we’re sorry to say.

But we’ll still be busy telling lies like nobody’s business, when we open the Into The Woods stage at the fantastic Beacons Festival near Skipton on Friday, August 17!

The storytelling starts at 1pm.

Just think of it: LLL sharing a playbill with Roots Manuva. Kinda.

Maybe we’ll see you there – but, if we don’t, you’ll soon be able to see us here: we’ll be posting all the videos from our first festival once we’re home safe and sound.

We’ll be sure to keep you posted about our next show in good old Leeds – email liarsleagueleeds@gmail.com to get yourself added to our mailing list.

Enjoy the rest of the summer!

Muck & Brass: July 25, 2012

Liars’ League Leeds celebrated its first birthday with five great stories, five awesome performances, and a plateful slateful of in-no-way-marked-down-Jubilee-leftovers birthday cupcakes.

Here’s LLL mainstay Stephen Bellamy giving a blistering reading of Stanley James’  grotesque mediaeval drama From Within:

 

From Within, by Stanley James

The scourge has come upon us. In the shite-strewn streets the ragged preachers howl of damnation, and preach sermons from the Second Book, I shall hold forth mine hand, and I shall smite thee and thy people with pestilence, and thou shalt perish from the earth. More lie dead than the living can bury. The fat white maggot feasts and the bold and busy rat scurries in the gutters. All is filth – all is filth and blood and foetid summer rainwater.

The common people, as they weep, and suffer, and burn, and die, and cry to Christ Jesus that they, their wives, their children, might be spared, know it as The Mortality. Or the Black Death.

And in normal circumstances I would be all for it.

Read the rest of From Within here.

More to come soon…

Muck & Brass: July 25, 2012

We’re back! And, what’s more, IT’S OUR BIRTHDAY!

Liars’ League Leeds is one year old this month (we know, we know, we don’t look a day over ten months). To celebrate, we’ve gone back to our roots and northerned it up with a thoroughly flat-capped theme: our Muck & Brass night will be held at the fantastic White Cloth Gallery on Wednesday, July 25th.

The stories this month are:

Visiting Professor, by Brindley Hallam Dennis

Dougal’s Hobby, by Stephen Bellamy

Merci Maitresse, by MJ Choudhury

From Within, by Stanley James

The Cow And Cabbage, by Liam Hogan

We’ve got torture by trumpet, dirty work among the cabbages, an aromatic academic, the bright side of the Black Death, and a dominatrix with doubts….

All brought to life by our crew of terrific actors! Plus, there’ll be the almost famous Liars’ League Leeds half-time books quiz, with real papery prizes to be won!

There might even be birthday cake.

All for just £3!

We’ll be flinging wide our doors at 7pm, and getting the storytelling started at 7.30. But if you’d like to get fed and watered at the Gallery bar, and check out some of the White Cloth’s fantastic exhibitions, you can pretty much show up as early as you like…

Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your colleagues, tell Twitter, tell Facebook, dammit, tell the whole damn’ world!

We’ll see you there! 

Liars’ League Leeds does International Short Story Day!

On June 20, LLL went across town to Leeds’ fabulous White Cloth Gallery to put on a special show for International Short Story Day (in association with the lovely folk at Comma Press).

Here’s Rose Condo reading ‘Juice’, by Katy Darby:

Juice, by Katy Darby

They always came in the morning, cheerful like Mammy, bustling and rustling and smelling of soap and iodine. Get up Laney, rise and shine, time for your juice. Just like Momma did when I was small, calling me down for my juice and cereal; Cap’n Crunch on weekends, or when I’d been real good. I made the nurses call it juice; it sounded nicer that way. Reminded me of sunshine on oranges, of commercials full of people with clean eyes and happy teeth. This juice is like medicine; you don’t got to like it but you got to take it…

Read the whole story.

And this is Matthew Lewney reading ‘Ten Green Bottles’, by Sam Carter:

Ten Green Bottles, by Sam Carter

He’d been saving up since he heard. At first he couldn’t do anything, just lay curled under his duvet or on his sofa, staring at things; the wall, the blank TV, the congealing washing-up in the sink. But then he’d thought, fuck it. It’s a long weekend, only one way to make it shorter. No flag-waving with the family; not even an away-from it all coupley city-break for him. He wandered the narrow striplit horseshoe of Evan’s crammed shop, planning his strategy: a case of Rolling Rock to start with, main course two bottles of Bulgarian wine (both colours) for a fiver, and pills for dessert. There was even half a bottle of Gordon’s and some Tia Maria for coffee and liqueurs. Sorted…

Read the rest of the story here.

And here’s Esther Cleverly’s ‘Trouble With Moles’, read by Jane Hollington:

Trouble with Moles, by Esther Cleverly

 Nathan comes every Wednesday after school, to teach her chemistry. At least, that’s what her parents think. That’s what he thinks too. And she’s learning some chemistry. Slowly. But what she’s mostly learning is that he isn’t like other boys…

You can (and should) read rest of the story here.