Felixstowe Book Festival

Behind the scenes of the Felixstowe Book Festival

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Each spring, festival brochures and posters with stunning colour-block images appear in businesses around town, heralding the new programme of events. Louise Millar asks artist Rebecca Pymar about the process of creating her beautiful artwork

Rebecca, can you tell us, how you started designing for the Felixstowe Book Festival?

‘A lady connected to the festival saw my illustrations at Art on the Prom on Felixstowe Pier, about eight years ago, and forwarded them to the festival. Meg [Reid, festival chair] hadn’t quite found a style yet for their brochures and thought mine might work.’

What was the brief?

‘To marry books and the town. It was quite difficult at the start, putting “books” and “Felixstowe” together, without being cheesy. A bit of a head-scratcher!

‘I started off with an image of books next to a deckchair. That developed into an illustration of Felixstowe Docks, with books being loaded into a ship, rather than shipping containers. The books had flags on them, as a nod to the town’s international connections

‘We change the image every year, or every few years, depending on how well it works. This year we have the new beach huts, with the platform uprights replaced with books.’

Tell us a little about your art background.

‘I grew up in Suffolk, and did a fine art degree at Loughborough, training in painting and screen-printing, which is the method of pushing ink through a silk screen onto paper. Today, I mainly paint and illustrate digitally. My style is still informed by the principles of screen-printing, even though it isn’t something I get the opportunity to practise much anymore.’

Which artists have inspired you?

‘Artists who used print and colour, especially painters from the New York School, like Rothko and Barnett Newman. The way they used blocks of colour was quite revolutionary – the simplicity had an appeal for me.’

Your festival prints have a nostalgic yet contemporary feel – how do you achieve that?

‘People often say that they remind them of old travel posters. I think that’s because up till thirty or forty years ago, commercial posters were screen-printed.

‘At the time, it was the only way to deliver solid, flat blocks of colour to a large area.

‘The theory is that if an image is bigger, like on a poster or a painting, your eyes have to try to read it, to work out what they’re seeing. But when you have large, flat areas of colour, you can figure out what it says very quickly. The quicker you can see what an image is, the more impactful it is.

‘Vintage commercial art back then was designed to be glanced at. Posters were simple and clear, without too much fuss. That’s my style – I leave out the fuss!’

Do we see elements of art deco in your prints, too?

‘Yes. That’s due to the tourism boom in the 1920s and 1930s, where coastal towns like Felixstowe were marketed as a destination, with an influx of art deco additions. Felixstowe has lots of little art deco additions, like the spa pavilion.’

Yet your colours are quite contemporary? What is your inspiration for those?

‘When it’s a coastal image, my instinct is always to go with blues, yellow and oranges – for sand, sea and sky. They’re nice complimentary colours.’

Can you talk us through the design process for your festival illustrations?

‘Meg usually commissions me a few months before Christmas. We discuss ideas. This year we decided to include the new beach huts. They’re a new feature for Felixstowe, with the original site being reinstated as a heritage project.

‘To start with, I do a line drawing by hand, with paper and pen, working on scale, trying to get everything in proportion. Then I photograph the image and transfer it to my IPad and fill in the block colour digitally with Adobe Illustrator.

‘It feels bittersweet that a lot of work is done digitally now because of the technology available, but it does give you so many more options for editing and perfecting images. With practises like screen-printing, it is expensive and labour intensive and you must embrace the flaws! (Which I secretly do love about the process).

‘I then show a first draft to Meg. She sometimes makes a few edit suggestions, for example, adding the festoon lights to the beach huts illustration, or maybe asking for a corner of sea that points the image more towards Felixstowe.’

Your images are instantly recognisable as the book festival artwork. Do you regard part of your design role as being a branding specialist?

‘Primarily I see myself as an artist but as I have worked on several commercial and branding projects, I am able work with branding in mind, both in terms of colours and composition. For the Felixstowe artwork I try to keep the work consistent with the previous year so that it is recognisable. Once I have finished, I hand it over to a graphic designer who takes the branding element to the next level, designing the brochure, with layout, logos and fonts.’

Where can festival goers find your work?
‘I was pleasantly surprised when Meg suggested we sell the prints and cards at the festival. You can find them when you visit the event.’

What response have you had to your artwork over the years?

‘It’s really nice that people from Felixstowe recognise my work now, and comment on it on social media. I read all the comments. I live in Norwich now but have always felt a connection to the town through doing Art on the Prom. Doing this work for the festival makes me feel even more connected.’

The book that changed me

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Festival blog editor Louise Millar on Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams, the novella that fixed her writer’s block and returned her to the joy of reading

As the author of four published crime novels, to experience severe writer’s block, suddenly, in the middle of book five, felt like a nightmare.

How did it happen?

Unforeseen, traumatic family events can happen to any of us. In my case, they came all at once, leaving me both hypervigilant and foggy brained.

‘Secondary trauma’, was the diagnosis a doctor gave me, describing it like a mild PTSD.

I brushed the news aside, and returned to work. It would all be fine, I was sure. My urge to write remained strong, and if I kept going, the writer’s block would surely disappear.

But as I battled on through my fifth thriller, the plot became increasingly tangled. I felt as if I were tipping words from a dictionary onto the page and shuffling them around. They made sense, but I couldn’t feel them.

And if I couldn’t feel them, how could a reader?

Worse, I was struggling to read now, too. My eyes were skating off the page. Stephen King says, to be a writer one must ‘read a lot, and write a lot’ – and now I couldn’t do either.

So I put my tangled fifth novel away, and started a new one.

A year later, that wasn’t working either.

Later, a psychologist told me that when our brains experience trauma, they switch to survival mode, and take ‘offline’ the parts we don’t need. My imagination, it seemed, had gone ‘offline’, along with my ability to ‘feel’ words.

Abjectly, I found myself scrolling through Instagram, watching Netflix, and managing the odd audiobook – with lots of rewinds – eyeing the novels on my husband’s bedside table, envious of his ability to disappear into imaginary worlds I could no longer access.

As our family situation thankfully improved, and the fog lifted, I returned to writing short pieces about art and music, but it still felt like running through water. The only fiction I produced, whose words I could feel, was, not surprisingly, a short story about a woman fighting to regain her voice.

Then, in 2025, just before Christmas, I was telling a friend at work, who loves reading, how much I missed it.

‘Have you read Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson.’ He said, ‘It’s short – a novella.’

Truth was, Train Dreams, a story about a man working on the American railroads, sat on my bookshelf at home. I’d given up after Chapter One.

Later that day, as I was talking to another writer friend, I heard him pause mid-sentence.

‘Do you know you’re on that thing constantly?’ he asked.

I looked up and realised I’d been scrolling as he answered my question about how his own book was progressing.

‘And when you do talk,’ he continued, ‘it’s like your brain is scrolling through Instagram. It leaps about from idea to idea.’

I stood stunned. But I couldn’t argue. He was right. Something had to change.

That night, I went home and took Train Dreams off the shelf. It was 103 pages. Surely, I could manage a third of a novel.

My eyes skated off the first page, searching for my phone. I forced them back, and read on through the first chapter, then two more, battling to stay focused.

Before I knew it, I was immersed in beautiful elegiac writing about a character living in a forest scorched by fire, his memories buried in ash, watching new, green life return through the blackened ground, but now in different form.

The next morning, driving home from the gym, I felt an urge to do something. What was it? To check my phone? Then I realised it was to get back to my book.

I read on through Train Dreams that day. In it, I encountered an astonishing image of an injured forest creature that I know I’ll never forget. As I read on, I began to feel a rhythm to the novella that reminded me of train stops, each one a destination in the journey of a train labourer’s life through a rapidly changing America.

Finally, I made it to p103. We talk a lot about powerful opening lines in novels. I’m not sure I’ve read a more powerful last line, than in Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams.

I shut the book. I had done it. I could do it. I was a reader again. And now I wanted more.

Over Christmas I gathered and bought recommendations, including another novella by Hemingway and Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead. In the New Year, I read Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie, and raced through the short chapters of Clare Leslie Hall’s Broken Country. Right now, I’m in the middle of Patti Smith’s The Kids.

Then a strange thing happened two weeks ago. I woke up realising I had dreamt, for the first time in years.

My brain was sending me stories again.

I found myself thinking about Broken Country, and my own fifth novel. Would cutting the tangled plot into short chapters help?

A new character jumped into my mind, as I was driving to work. An ambitious young woman who works in Whitehall, who sees something she shouldn’t on the way to an interview.

I found the last draft of my fifth novel on my laptop, and cut in half the first chapter, about a woman who lives alone in rural Scotland. It suddenly felt more punchy. I inserted a new Chapter Two, set in London, introducing my new character. My brain began to chug along, then speed up, as it went to work connecting the two women and their locations.

If writer’s and reader’s block was just a stop on my own life journey, then I’m hoping that Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams has sent me onwards again.

 

 

 

Felixstowe Book Festival Opening Event!!!!

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Our main festival tickets might not yet be on sale until Wednesday 1st April, but you can already secure your tickets today for our Opening Event on: Friday 26th June from 7.30pm
Venue: Two Sisters Arts Centre, High Rd, Trimley St Mary, Felixstowe IP11 0SP


Scenes from a Life features poems from Blake Morrison’s Afterburn as well as his prose writing. Blake’s readings are accompanied by music composed and played by members of the Hosepipe Band

This event is a collaboration between Felixstowe Book Festival and the Two Sisters Arts Centre
Tickets £15 (£13) available to purchase here

Announcing our first Pre Festival Event in May with Nicci French

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This year we’ve again teamed up with the rather splendid Orwell Lady River Trips. In May, ahead of the main festival in June,  you have the chance to immerse yourself in the picturesque Suffolk countryside. We are inviting you to journey along the River Orwell, one of England’s most beautiful and historic rivers.

Hop onboard from Ipswich Waterfront, sail gently along the river and hear from the writing partnership of journalists Nicci Gerrard and Sean French AKA Nicci French.

Focusing on their career, writing techniques and their latest book What Happened That Night (published February 2026).

Books will be available to purchase on board. There will be plenty of time to mingle, ask questions and to have your books signed too.

Ticket price includes delicious homemade scones served with fresh clotted cream and lashings of strawberry jam. Drinks can be purchased from the licensed bar on board.

The whole trip is 3 hours, leaving Ipswich at 2pm. Tickets are £44pp, available to purchase here

Places are limited so early booking is advised. This special event in May is one of our Pre Festival Events ahead of the Felixstowe Book Festival which takes place this year from Friday 26th through to Sunday 28th June. A full list of authors joining us this year will be released soon. To be first in the know, sign up to our newsletter and follow us too on social media @FelixstoweBookFest

What does the Felixstowe Book Festival mean to you?

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As we start preparations for this year’s 2026 festival, Louise Millar asks three festival regulars how our exciting local event has changed their lives

Stephen Amer sound engineer

‘The Felixstowe Book Festival means a great deal to me, both professionally and personally.

‘My role at the festival is to provide sound for the Palm Room events and, more recently, also the conservatory. Along with a team of two other technicians, we make sure that authors and audiences can hear each other clearly and comfortably.

‘On the surface that might sound straightforward, but the Palm Room, whilst a stunning, historic room in the Grade II listed Harvest House, has glass-domed ceiling, marble floors and not a single scrap of fabric, curtain or carpet! A sound technician’s nightmare. In the run up to the festival and over the course of a busy weekend it involves a lot of preparation, adaptability and calm problem-solving.

‘During the festival I’m responsible for setting up and running microphones, managing levels, and responding quickly to the different needs of each event. Every author is different: some project naturally, others speak more quietly; some love a handheld mic, others forget it’s there altogether.

‘We do our best to try quietly to make things work for most people (of differing hearing abilities) so that conversations can flow and the audience can stay engaged without noticing too much that there is a technical side happening.

‘Being part of the Felixstowe Book Festival feels special because it’s more than just another job. Meg (Reid, director) and the team curate a line-up and create an atmosphere that’s welcoming, well-organised and genuinely appreciative of everyone’s contribution. Over the years, that sense of being part of a trusted team has grown, as has my connection to the festival itself. I’ve enjoyed the professional challenge of working in spaces like Harvest House, but also the community feel of the festival – seeing familiar faces return each year, and watching audiences respond so warmly to such a wide range of speakers.

‘My highlights have included working with some high-profile authors such as Sir Terry Waite, Stephen McGann – who was extremely charismatic and very funny – and Carol Drinkwater. Equally memorable, though perhaps less well known to some, was Dame Stella Rimington, who offered fascinating insights into the intricacies of life as both the head of MI5 and the first woman to hold that role. Robin Ince was a joy to experience as a speaker: funny, compassionate and hugely engaging, while Jenny Boyd shared wonderful and revealing glimpses into the hidden world behind her experiences with some of the world’s biggest rock stars.’

June Stockdale, festival volunteer

‘As soon as I saw the festival was coming to Felixstowe [in 2013] I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I wanted to be part of it. I didn’t know what was involved but I saw Meg at an author talk in the library, we connected, and becoming a volunteer went from there.

‘The first festival, in the Orwell Hotel, was a little bit chaotic. People didn’t know what to expect. When I turned up the first day, somebody had changed the rota at the last minute, and said they didn’t need me. Then they saw my face! And gave me a job!

‘As volunteers, we do all sorts – take tickets on the door, assist audience members finding rooms, and fetch water for authors. I’ve met some amazing volunteers over the years. Because you share a love of books, you have a common purpose. You say, ‘Have you read that one?’ and start talking.

‘Having the festival here in Felixstowe, has meant so much to me because I’ve been a book lover my whole life. I’m an only child, and when I was young, books were my brothers and sisters.

‘I started with comics. My mum used to do a bit of cleaning, and I’d go with her. On the way home, she’d stop at the newsagent to buy me a comic, and when we got home, she’d make a drink, and she’d read it to me.

‘At school, I progressed to Enid Blyton. I’d go off somewhere in my head. I was part of the Famous Five gang!

‘As an adult, I like to try most kinds of books. I always have five or six on the go. I have them in every room and in my bag on the bus. When I have a bath, I read, but I have to make sure it’s one of my own, in case it goes in!

‘The excitement for me of volunteering at the festival has always been seeing authors in the flesh, often my favourite writers, and hearing them read. It sounds silly but you put them on a pedestal, but most are so lovely and talk to everybody.

‘One of my favourite memories is being on the door of Guy Fraser-Samson’s talk on his book about cricket. When I saw it on rota, I thought, “Oh great”. I knew nothing about cricket, and only six people attended. But my goodness, what an incredible talk it was. The amount of facts and figures – and no notes! He was so eloquent, I was absolutely hooked.

‘I’ve had many happy years volunteering at the festival, but my favourite thing of all is when you get there early, to set up, and they’re opening the boxes of brand new books at the book stall. The smell! I just was to touch them all!’

Barbara Lamberton, attends the festival annually with her husband Alan.

‘The festival is one of the highlights of our year. Beforehand my husband and I examine the brochure and decide which talks to book. He likes non-fiction books whereas I like mostly fiction and, in particular, crime fiction.

‘We normally book between nine to 11 talks. Sometimes we both go to a talk together but usually we are separate.

‘There is always a feeling of anticipation and appreciation of the wonderful venue. We meet old friends and new people, and we immerse ourselves in the magic of the written word. It is so interesting to hear authors speak about their work, and read from their books, and answer our questions.

‘It would be hard to pick our particular highlights, because there are so many. The very first festival was opened by Martin Newell & The Hosepipe Band, and he remains a favourite of ours. We have several of his books of poetry as well as CDs of ‘Black Shuck’ and ‘The Green Children of Woolpit’.

‘I also love Nicci French. I recently read ‘The Last Days of Kira Mullan’, their latest book, in three days, I could not put it down! It is always wonderful to hear Nicola Upson and Mandy Morton – Tea at 3 is such a highlight. Mandy is a superb reader.

‘Ruth Dugdall is another author I met at the festival and I have really enjoyed her books: plus Salley Vickers, JoJo Moyes, Louise Doughty, Mark Billingham, Harriet Tyce, Louis de Bernières… who could choose?

‘Next year I do hope we shall see Martin Newell again, but I am always thrilled to find new authors, fiction and non-fiction, because I read quicker than one author can write! I would love to hear more poetry too.

‘Whatever happens we will continue to support our wonderful book festival.’

Tickets for this year’s festival will go on sale from Wednesday 1st April – to be first in the know when it comes to visiting authors for this year’s Festival go to our website  and sign up for our newsletter

Happy Christmas from Luxembourg!

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Festival author Ruth Dugdall takes us on a special Christmas visit back to the location that inspired her relaunched Cate Austin crime series

I hadn’t been to a Christmas market until I moved to Luxembourg with my husband and two children and we fully embraced the tradition of drinking warm Gluhwein (or hot chocolate for the kids!) and eating gromperekichelcher – a traditional Luxembourg ‘delicacy’, if that’s the right word for fried potato served with a carton of apple sauce. It really is delicious.

Though Luxembourg is a small city it packs a punch with its markets, selling gingerbread hearts iced with messages and glass globes full of snowy scenes. For two years, the month of December was full of family trips to the market, to meet friends and go on the big wheel and eat salt-studded pretzels, and all the time I was working Nowhere Girl which takes Cate Austin, my Suffolk-born probation officer, to Luxembourg.

Ten years after leaving I returned this year, because Nowhere Girl and the rest of the Cate Austin series is being relaunched by Harper Collins, starting in January 2026 with The Woman Before Me. I wanted to re-fresh my view of Luxembourg and notice any changes. They now have a tramline, so I needed to include that! As we walked around the cobbled streets that we once knew so well, something limbic happened and the ten years melted away. Our faces were illuminated by lights as we visited wooden chalets selling trinkets, and looked up at the big wheel wondering if we dared go on it. We went ice-skating, laughing and falling over, and I felt that we were home once again; that my son and daughter were no longer the young adults they are, but were playful children once again.

I think the magic of Christmas is that it gives us permission to play. Whether it’s ice-skating or Monopoly, pulling crackers or doing the Christmas Dip, the traditions we create act as alchemy to make the season special. It’s like walking through a wardrobe into another world where we can be more carefree. Just for a while.

I hope this Christmas brings you and yours a moment of playfulness and joy.


Merry Christmas, Ruth x

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