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Lancaster Literature Festival - Litfest 2022 at The Storey Creative Industries Centre, Lancaster, 17–26 March 2023, free entry - Visit now
There’s plenty going on at Litfest 2023, Lancaster’s literature festival running 17 to 26 March – and all tickets are free. Following on from Lancaster’s 44th annual literature festival last March, and a special autumnal edition of Litfest in October, there’s talks, readings, lectures and discussions to take part in either in person or virtually as the programme remains hybrid.
Friday 17 and Saturday 18 March are given over to the children’s festival, featuring family-friendly activities and events, including a reading by Frank Cottrell-Boyce. Join the festival’s Reader in Residence Sophie Anderson for three different age-specific drop-in sessions on Saturday morning at the City Library, then again at 4pm, when the Lake District-based writer will present her own book, The Thief Who Sang Storms. There’s also philosophy, history, nature and art, and Litfest rounds off on Sunday 26 March, 6pm, with a storytelling finale from storyteller, musician and singer Nick Hennessey Dreaming The Great Bear.
Following on from Lancaster’s 44th annual literature festival last March, and a special autumnal edition of Litfest in October, there’s talks, readings, lectures and discussions to take part in either in person or virtually as the programme remains hybrid.
On Sunday 19 March, the focus turns to fiction, seeing Luke Williams reading extracts of his Goldsmiths Prize 2022-winning Fitzcarraldo Editions-published novel Diego Garcia, and chatting about it with Lindsey Moore. That’s at 3.30pm and is followed, at 5pm and also at The Round in The Dukes, by Eoghan Walls, teacher of Creative Writing at Lancaster University, in conversation with his colleague Zoe Lambert about his debut novel The Gospel Of Orla – described by Colm Tóibín as ‘utterly convincing and fresh and original’.
Saturday 25 March is poetry day, with two double bills on offer in The Auditorium at The Storey: Katie Hale and Zaffar Kunial at 1pm, followed by Sean O’Brien and Stephanie Sy-Quia at 2.30pm. Both events will be presented Paul Farley, whose latest book, The Mizzy, is published by Picador.
Cumbria-based poet and novelist, Katie Hale is Litfest’s Poet in Residence this year. In 2019, she published her first novel, My Name Is Monster, and her debut poetry collection – about to come out with Nine Arches Press – is White Ghosts: ‘A collection of revealing, unflinching poems tracing maternal lines and difficult legacies of slavery and whiteness interwoven into the fabric of America.’ At 7.30pm, Katie Hale will be back to introduce From Source To Sea, looking at poems about rivers, their history, economy and ecology, and inviting readings by contributors to the specially created Litfest poetry map.
Zaffar Kunial lives in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, and was born in Birmingham. His first collection, Us, was shortlisted for a number of prizes including the TS Eliot and he was a 2022 recipient of the Yale University Windham–Campbell Prize. England’s Green is his second book, just out with Faber in 2022, and in it, he invites us to look at the place and the language we think we know, and then makes us think again.
Sean O’Brien was born in London, grew up in Hull and lives in Newcastle upon Tyne. He is a poet, critic, editor, translator, broadcaster and novelist. His poetry, including The Beautiful Librarians, Europa and It Says Here, has won many awards, including the TS Eliot Prize and the EM Forster Award. His latest collection, Embark reminds us of the enduring consolations of love, of friendship, of possible futures and poetry itself.
Stephanie Sy–Quia’s debut collection, Amnion, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and winner of the 2022 Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Born in California in 1995, she studied English at Oxford and now works as a freelance journalist in London; Amnion excavates migratory histories, colonialism and class, and charts what it means to grow up in a family divided by geography, history and language.
All events are free, but you need to book a ticket online. Please check the Litfest website for details of dates, times, venues and online arrangements.
Lancaster Literature Festival - Litfest 2022 at The Storey Creative Industries Centre, Lancaster
17–26 March 2023
Free entry
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