The north’s longest-running literature festival, now in its 51st year, begins tomorrow, Friday 4 October with around 90 events across 17 days at the King’s Hall and in venues across town.
The first festival weekend features the former leader of the Green Party, Caroline Lucas, discussing whether we can reclaim ideas of Englishness from the cheerleaders of exceptionalism and aggressive nationalism on the right in her event Another England.
Former One Show presenter, Adrian Chiles, brings his idiosyncratic takes on British life to the King’s Hall, discussing his offbeat Guardian columns that gained him a cult following.
Award-winning slam poet - and self-confessed Michael Jackson mega fan - Vanessa Kisuule starts a conversation on the pleasures and perils of fandom and the costs of hero worship.
Orwell-Prize winning journalist Paul Caruana Galizia discusses the assassination of his mother, the Maltese journalist and anti-corruption campaigner, Daphne Caruana Galizia, and his family’s quest for justice in his event A Death in Malta.
To date, 24 events have already sold out across the festival, including the opening event with Patrick Grant of the Great British Sewing Bee, as well as headline authors Theresa May, Gyles Brandreth, Dame Harriet Walter, Alan Hollinghurst and Miranda Sawyer.
Erica Morris, Ilkley Literature festival director, said: “We can’t wait to welcome readers and audiences to experience this wealth of incredible writers – novelists, poets, journalists, historians, political commentators, essayists, and children’s authors. We hope people will join in, be inspired, and enjoy a raft of contemporary ideas, debate, and discussion from ethics of AI to the history of Britpop.”
Marking National Poetry Day today, [3 Oct], Ilkley Literature Festival has a 50-year legacy of promoting poetry. The inaugural festival was opened by WH Auden in 1973. This year’s poetry highlights include events with former Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and Makar of Scotland, Jackie Kay. Also featured are the Choreopoet (combining poetry and dance) Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa, and Ted Hughes Prize winner, Raymond Antrobus – whose latest collection Signs, Music has just been shortlisted for the prestigious T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry.
Alongside a number of established, prize-winning poets, the festival will be showcasing six rising poets who have been selected as this year’s cohort of New Northern Poets. The New Northern Poets will be taking part in a series of commissions and events around the 2024 Festival, including the New Northern Poets showcase and the Poet’s Corner Reading Group.
A free poetry networking event ‘Informal Verse’ runs on Sunday 13 October for poets and like-minded verse-lovers – offering the opportunity to make new connections in the poetry world over drinks and nibbles.
The 2024 Ilkley Literature Festival runs from 4-20 October, further details of the programme are available at www.ilkleyliteraturefestival.org.uk