Upcoming event: Friday 1st – Sunday 10th March 2013.
Bath is a city with a prolific literary history. Not only the former home of Jane Austen and a source of inspiration for Charles Dickens, it’s also a modern-day local haunt for various contemporary writers such as Sam Harvey and Gerard Woodward. This strong literary link across the ages makes it a fitting place for a dynamic, relevant literature festival.
Bath Lit Festival boasts some gargantuan names this year with Harry Potter legend J. K. Rowling, crime writer P.D. James, double Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel and Labyrinth author Kate Mosse all mucking in. Other authors making a splash at the festival include: Tracy Chevalier, Helen Dunmore, Nadeem Aslam and Pat Barker to name a few! Astute locals will notice some close-to-home novelists in the mix including Bath Spa Creative Writing Tutor Tessa Hadley.
The ten day festival, which was established in 1995, is a much dog-eared event on the literary calendar and past speakers include Martin Amis and Tariq Ali. This year’s festival focuses on the First World War, which was impending 100 years ago. Sparked off by Sarajevo with Allan Little, the festival will host a series of events devoted to the build -up to the Great War in Europe. This opening event starts where it all began, with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28th June 1914. Events within the series will explore the happenings around 1913 that led to the war, as well as creating a dialogue within themes such as freedom of thought, politics, speech, religion and justice.
This year boasts a varied calendar with everything from Sportswriting to The Pornography Debate gracing the calendar. Several events offer the potential for participation with informative morning walks and Wish You Were Here just a few of these hands-on book-stravaganzas. The Bookshop Band will be sporadically serenading events across the festival with songs inspired by the books, authors and themes of the festival.
Not just for readers, the festival also caters for writers through various writers’ surgeries and performance poetry events dotted across the calendar as well as practical classes such as Writing in the Social Media Age and PR for Writers.
Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights (www.mrbsemporium.com) the two-time winner of UK Independent Bookshop of the Year (2011 and 2008) is the official festival bookseller and a pop-up alternative to their main store can be found inside the Guildhall for the duration of the festival with a full selection of festival books. With signings after most events, this is a golden nugget of an opportunity to nab yourself some signed copies.
You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but in this instance I think we’d be justified in saying that the Bath Literature Festival 2013 program is one enthralling read!
Tickets can be booked via the website www.bathfestivals.org.uk or via their box office 01225 463362. Ticket sales are open as of the 9th January.
Our thanks to Jessica Cook for this article on the Literature Festival.
