Hey, there’s a mighty cool project kicking off in Birmingham City called Lost Districts.

Lost Districts are looking to link the dark, moving, writing of the sadly departed Joel Lane with stunning images from photographers and artists.

At the moment they’re gathering extracts of text from Joel’s work, which was predominately set in the West Midlands, getting ready to draw up a list of ten sites that they want images for. The project will take place over the ten days of the Birmingham Literature Festival. Each day a winning image will be chosen and from those ten images an overall winner will receive £100.

So if you’re a budding artist, or a demon with a lens, get over to their site and read on for more details here.

If you’re unfamiliar with Joel’s work you should change that a.s.a.p. This quote from Chaz Brenchley, author of Shelter, Blood Waters, The Garden and other critically acclaimed works of crime fiction, should help:

“Joel Lane documents a life we don’t quite live, in a city we can’t quite find: half glimpsed and half imagined, we know it’s out there somewhere. Waiting, maybe. Mixing fear with desire, reputation with regret. Touching the blood-beat of our secret hunger with the rhythms of a music that never felt alien till now. Wasted lives, with never a wasted word. It’s an extraordinary achievement: vivid as neon, real as rain. Devastating.”