The Portico is home to an eclectic range of fantastic public events, from talks and performances to exhibitions, awards and workshops.
Our exhibition space and the café (The Portico Kitchen) are co-sharing the same area under the Georgian dome. With the exhibition surrounding the café, you can dine, drink and have a conversation in this space while you explore our public exhibition.
Free entry, during Library’s opening time.
Friday 20 March - Saturday 3 October 2026
28 April - July 2026
This pop-up exhibition at the Portico Library invites you to experience Elizabeth Gilbert’s historical novel The Signature of All Things in a different way: by stepping behind the story and into the books, ideas and lives that helped shape it. Drawing on the Portico’s historic collections, the display traces the scientific discoveries, intellectual debates and overlooked voices that echo through the book.
By showing extracts from the text alongside the works that inspired it, the exhibition turns reading into a game, encouraging you to look again, read anew, and make new connections. Come and see a signed copy of the novel, a 19th century women’s travelling costume, and a selection of books that show how libraries bring knowledge together across centuries, sparking imagination, revealing hidden histories, and inspiring new stories.
Part of the Manchester UNESCO City of Literature Festival of Libraries
Curated by Dr. Susana Sanchez-Gonzalez, HE Innovation Fellow at Creative Manchester, University of Manchester.
With kind thanks to Debbie Challis, Apapat Jain-Glynn, and the library volunteers for all their help.
Abbi Parcell (BA MA PGCE) is a butch writer and poet based in Manchester. She explores testimony of lived experience through auto-fictional practice. Her work explores intersections that shape personal identity, considering how internal processes intersect with external perceptions. Abbi focuses on the importance of establishing queer and in particular, lesbian histories, connections and how radical it has always been to simply exist.
She is currently a Writer in Residence at the Portico Library and is completing her PhD in Auto-fiction as Testimony at The University of Salford. Abbi has also worked with The Manchester Poetry Library, The International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Manchester City of Literature, LIRG and The Poetry School London. Her poetry collection Hold Your Metaphors Accountable was released in 2023 and was published by Team Trident Press
Abbi Parcell
Black and white photograph of a young white person with dark short hair wearing glasses and a jacket
The story of how the new independent publisher Fox and Windmill Press came into being and the importance of place in identity by co-founder Habiba Desai.
Memoir-writer, novelist, poet, and short-story writer Catherine Simpson reflects on the life story which has led her to publish three books.
First-time published author Zara Sehar reflects on her experience of writing, reading and what it means to rewrite the north.
Arguably, crime writing in the North West begins with Manchester-born Thomas De Quincey’s 1827 essay ‘On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts’, which has heavily influenced murder mysteries from the early nineteenth century until the current day.
I don’t remember knowingly reading, either as a child or as a young adult, specifically Northern writing, but for as long as I can remember I was always conscious of being northern, and that this was a Good Thing.
by Myna Trustram
On the train on my way to the library I read a review of Ariel Levy’s memoir, The Rules Do Not Apply (2017). She describes a writing assignment in Mongolia, where alone in a hotel room she miscarried, and held in her hand her five-month foetus son as he died.
By Hope Strickland.
The Caribbean Society in Manchester run a series of holidays spread across the year. Some will be small trips to Blackpool, the Highlands or a stately home. Once or twice a year they travel to a sun-soaked destination abroad: a cruise maybe or a five-star hotel by the beach. My Grandma, Ina, organises these trips from her kitchen in Northenden…
Explore our Past Exhibitions
The Portico’s free public exhibitions incorporate books and materials from the Library’s collection, contemporary artworks by local and international artists and objects from partner museums and galleries. They consider the Library’s 220-year history and unique collection with its city’s 21st-century communities.
