News of two events to promote my Science Museum climate change novel Shackleton’s Man Goes South, at literature festivals during October. It would be great to see you at either gig if you are in the Manchester or Leeds areas.

On 15 October I will be reading from and discussing Shackleton’s Man Goes South at Manchester Literature Festival, with Gregory Norminton, author and editor of the climate change-themed short story collection Beacons: Stories for our not so distant future (One World). Last time I did an event in Manchester was last year, when I read from my 2012 novella Dicky Star and the Garden Rule for Whitworth Gallery’s lates programme, and there was a great audience, so I’m looking forward to this one.

If you want to help spread the word, please tweet this event using @McrLitFest http://ow.ly/pb50V

Later that same week, joining me at Ilkley Literature Festival on Saturday 19 October will be IPCC lead author Professor Andy Challinor from the University of Leeds. This conversation will be chaired by the brilliant Siân Ede, who as well as being an eloquent broadcaster and writer on art and science collaborations of various kinds, has also been responsible for much art and science activity in the UK through her former role at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. I’m delighted to be sharing a stage with both of them. Also it is a great coup to have Professor Challinor taking part in this conversation just as the first parts of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, IPCC 5, are published, so look out for some personal insights in to both the IPCC process and the very latest thinking on climate change.

You can help spread the word by tweeting this event using @ilkleylitfest http://ow.ly/plx3w Thank you.

Topical trivia: I lived in Leeds for a couple of years in the mid-1980s, and the very first short story that I ever had published was set in Ilkley, but that was a long time ago and is probably a story for another time. More recently, my 2012 novella Dicky Star and the Garden Rule is set in the Leeds 6 area and here is Phil Kirby’s excellent (not-a-)review of it, from Leeds’s own Culture Vultures site.

Shackleton’s Man Goes South is available in free and DRM-free ebook formats from the Science Museum website, while Science Museum visitors can use the dedicated touchscreen that is part of my display in the Museum’s Atmosphere Gallery to email themselves an ebook of the novel in formats compatible with most contemporary devices, until 24 April 2014.

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