Lisa Doyle is Absolutely Fine Pitch: Northern Soul

Dear Helen,

I’d like to pitch a first-person essay for Northern Soul: Why Manchester is the perfect city for the modern romcom.

The argument: London and Cornwall have hogged this genre on the page, New York has hogged it on screen, and the result is a form that’s grown smug and curatedly shabby. Manchester has the exact texture a contemporary romcom actually needs. Close enough that nobody ever quite escapes their own life. Theatrical enough to support the lie that you’re ‘fine’. Unsentimental enough to puncture it. A 1.30am bench at Piccadilly with vending-machine coffee that tastes of wet tarmac. A tram across town with the gay best friend in a fake beard – the man you’ve just told your best friend you’re going to marry. Canal Street on a wet Tuesday afternoon. A Didsbury pub chosen for its plausible deniability. The piece would draw on those specific Manchester moments – and on the city’s quiet refusal to be glossy while everyone works overtime to seem so.

I’m Mo Fanning, a former Manchester/now Birmingham-based novelist. My new book Lisa Doyle is Absolutely Fine (Spring Street Books, June 2026) is set in Manchester, and I wrote it because I chose the city, not because I inherited it – which I think is part of the essay too.

I can deliver 800–1,200 words within two weeks of brief. Happy to flex on angle or length. Review copy, Q&A, press images and an excerpt all available if useful.

Thanks for considering it.

Best, Mo Fanning [website / email / phone]