Metaphrog's Blog, page 5

Brand new EP Wise Ol' Man - The Fall in Review

The Fall will release a seven track EP Wise Ol’ Man on the 19th of February, postponed from the original date of the 29th of January it is well worth the wait. The group celebrate their 40th anniversary and continue to make exciting, challenging music. In the sea of bland that passes for mainstream music these days it is refreshing to occasionally hear genuine, uncompromising creative artists. Even without the late John Peel, The Fall can be heard on the radio, someth...

Graphic Lyrics on BBC Radio

Graphic Lyrics, the project we were involved in as Writers in Residence at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 2015, was featured on the Janice Forsyth Show on BBC Radio Scotland.


Hear Janet Smith, Dave Hook and ourselves, as well as the pupils of Shawlands Academy and their teacher Mrs Kirk talk about the project: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06wcj2v (1h47min in).

Graphic Lyrics

Last night saw an extremely enjoyable and well-attended Burns Night celebration, at The Glad Café, for the culmination of the Graphic Lyrics project.

For the past six months we were Writers in Residence for the Edinburgh International Book Festival Booked programme, working with hip-hop artist Dave Hook helping S4 pupils of Shawlands Academy create comics and raps based on fairy tales. Last night's event saw the unveiling of the finished comic compiling all their work.


All the participants rece...

Red Shoes Deleted Scenes

"Deleted Scene" from The Red Shoes and Other Tales. At the request of our publisher we changed the violence in the page below to an off-panel cutting of the feet in the final version of the book. Sometimes showing less is just as effective.

Red Shoes launch at Northfield Academy

Last week for Book Week Scotland, Northfield Academy, where we are Patrons of Reading, organised a special Red Shoes book launch. 

280 kids from local schools gathered in the assembly hall and we talked about the book, the creative process and fairy tales. 


Waterstones were also there and sold lots of books. 

Afterwards we took our turn to participate in Book Fit, Mandy Wilson 's great initiative: read The Red Shoes on the exercise bike! Neil Hendry the head teacher took the lead!...

Writers in Residence at Edinburgh International Book Festival

Yesterday was our last session with the pupils of Shawlands Academy in our capacity as Writers in Residence at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2015 - as part of the Booked programme. The pupils have created four comic stories based on fairy tales and raps which we are now in the process of assembling into a special publication. We'll see them all again at the end of January for the final Burns Night celebration event at The Glad Café where Dave Hook will also do a performance and th...

Writers in Residence at Edinburgh International Book Festival

It's been three weeks now that we've been working with pupils at Shawlands Academy, in our capacity as Writers in Residence at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, helping them to create fairy tale comics. We have two more weeks to go and they have already produced lots of great work! We'll soon be able to gather all their stories into a publication and are really looking forward to hearing the raps the pupils have produced with Dave Hook! There will be a Burns Night celebration event i...

Writers in Residence at Edinburgh International Book Festival

Our sessions at Shawlands Academy as Writers in Residence at the Edinburgh International Book Festival got off to a good start this week. The pupils have already created fantastic fairy tale raps with Dave Hook and now they're beginning to transform them into comics. Our mission is to get them to complete four stories by the end of November! We especially like the Pinocchio comic which already looks amazing.


Pinocchio comic in progress

The Lakes International Comic Art Festival

Had a great time at The Lakes International Comic Art Festival launching our new graphic novel The Red Shoes and Other Tales. In fact we were so busy we completely forgot to take pictures! Jeremy Briggs was kind enough to send us photos he took throughout the weekend.  'Shiny New Red Shoes' launch talk chaired by Melanie Gibson One of our three Family Zone events at the
Westmorland Shopping CentreThanks to Melanie Gibson for being such a fantastic chairperson, to Page 45&nbs...

Red Shoes Launch at The Lakes Festival

So excited! Next week is the official launch of our new graphic novel THE RED SHOES AND OTHER TALES at The Lakes International Comic Art Festival co-launching with Page 45!
Our main talk SHINY NEW RED SHOES is on Saturday 17th at The Clock Tower and is chaired by Melanie Gibson - we'll be signing copies afterwards. Published by Papercutz the book is a beautiful quarter-bound volume.
We are also doing 3 children's events at the Westmorland Shopping Centre on Saturday and Sunday.

We won't have...