Leeds Lit Fest featuring Stuart Maconie at Leeds Minster
Sarah-Clare Conlon, Literature Editor
In its sixth year, the city’s award-winning Leeds Lit Fest in 2024 runs from 15 to 23 June across a range of the city’s venues bringing together writers and performers from Leeds and beyond, taking part in 35 events over 10 days. The Poet Laureate Simon Armitage’s band LYR get proceedings underway “in great poetic and musical style” at the historic Leeds Library (13 June), while another headliner is best-selling writer, journalist, broadcaster and BBC Radio 6 Music show presenter Stuart Maconie.
He’ll be bringing The Full English to Leeds Minster (15 June), following in Bradfordian polymath JB Priestley’s footsteps across our nation. Deftly weaving history and politics in engaging, conversational prose, The Full English is a love-letter to England written in Maconie’s inimitable style, taking as its start point, 90 years on, Priestley’s English Journey, “a warm, funny and tender forgotten classic: scathing about vested interests, intensely patriotic and politically progressive”.
Also on 15 June, globally renowned poetry powerhouse Salena Godden returns to Leeds after a two-year hiatus, as she headlines LIVEwire’s night of electric spoken word poetry at Hyde Park Book Club, in an event that aims to “transform your preconceptions around poetry forever”.
On 18 June, we’ve earmarked a Tolka Journal showcase featuring readings by Clare Fisher, Angelica Krikler and Kimberly Campanello, while on 22 June, there’s a Peepal Tree Press poetry showcase at Leeds Library (5pm), featuring two Leeds-based poets, Adam Lowe (whose Patterflash is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation) and Emily Zobel Marshall (Bath of Herbs), and a Northern Fiction Alliance Roadshow at Hyde Park Book Club, with book stalls from 11am and performances, from 3pm, by acclaimed writers Dylan Byford, Elliot J Harper, Matt Hill, Christine Roseeta Walker and SJ Bradley (stay for her play at 7.30pm).
Head over to the Leeds Lit Fest website for the full programme and all the details about dates, times, venues and prices.
