Felixstowe Book Festival

2017 Dates, Festival Friends and more!

16 August 2016 By HR

We can hardly believe that we’re halfway through August already! The summer’s flying by in a blur of beach days and summer reads. Do let us know what you’ve been reading recently via Twitter or Facebook; we love to hear your recommendations. Maybe you’re trying to get through your book haul from this year’s festival…

We just have a few titbits of information to impart and then we’ll leave you to your bookish adventures.

2017 festival dates announced

It seems like a long way off, but we thought we’d let you know next year’s festival dates as soon as possible, particularly as there’s a slight change to our usual weekend. Put 1st – 2nd July in your diaries now! We’ll be a week later than we usually are, due to there being a big local event happening at Landguard Fort on the last weekend in June. Planning has already started for what will be the fifth Felixstowe Book Festival and we’re hoping it will be our biggest and best yet (although this year will be a tough act to follow judging by your feedback forms…)

Become a Friend of Felixstowe Book Festival

We don’t want to sound desperate but we’re on the hunt for friends! This year we launched our Friends of Felixstowe Book Festival group and we now have all the details on our website here. This is a membership group for those wishing to support the festival and gain from early-bird booking, discounts and exclusive events. It only costs £20 a year for a single membership or £30 for a joint membership – what a bargain! Monies raised from this will directly support the running costs of the festival. We’re entirely volunteer organised and run and our ticket sales sadly do not cover all our costs. Becoming a Friend of the Festival is a fantastic way of helping us to keep producing programmes of real quality and diversity for many years to come.

Local Happenings

We’re excited that our festival book shop Stillwater Books are launching their own book group next month. The first meeting will be on 19th September at The Alex (sea views and book chat – what more could you ask for?) and they will be discussing Death in Profile by festival favourite Guy Fraser-Sampson. All are welcome, pop into the shop for more details. September will also see Felixstowe Library hosting a Roald Dahl Day party on 13th. Do pop into the library to find out more – it’s sure to be whizz-popping.

bookish best,

Hannah and the Festival Team

Thank you for coming!

1 July 2016 By HR

Here at Festival HQ we can hardly believe that nearly a week’s gone by since our fabulous 2016 events kicked off! To round-up this year, we thought we’d give you a few snapshots of the weekend as seen by members of the team…

A View From… the heart of things

I have always been proud of the fact that our festival has such a diverse and varied programme, and this year was no exception. Stationed at main festival venue The Orwell Hotel throughout the weekend, whether on the ticket desk or on the door, I was privileged to be able to assist at a number of very different events and hear about the most intriguing mix of subjects – from biography to babies, domestic noir to cat detectives! Through it all I was struck by the level of expertise of our speakers – poets, translators and writers at the top of their game – but also by the way in which our brilliant audiences engaged in the conversation and developed it further. All in all, a most inspiring and fun weekend! – Rosie (Social Media Team and weekend volunteer)

A View From… Felixstowe Library

I was at the Library for most of the weekend for our children’s and teen events and what a treat they were! What made these events so special was their audiences – whilst they may have been aimed at children and teens their appeal was far broader, with dads taking part in comic book masterclasses, grandparents spell-bound by Rebecca Elliott’s stories and whole families cheering on our Roald Dahl characters. I may be a little biased, but these were definitely the most vibrant and fun events on this year’s programme and you missed out if you didn’t catch any of them! – Hannah (Young People’s Programme Coordinator)

A View From… the director’s chair

Wonderful atmosphere, very positive buzz, responsive audiences, sell out events, happy authors, fabulous tech support, dedicated volunteer teams, generous sponsors, a book stall groaning with irresistible books, helpful hotel staff, delicious cakes- what a special weekend! Our speakers battled 7 hour plane delays, family crisis and flooded train lines to join us from Belgium, Sweden, Poland and all over the UK. Thank you! Thank you also to Laura Thompson and Nicola Upson who delivered a fascinating and very popular last minute event to replace Rose Tremain who had to cancel for family reasons. Personal highlights for me were the audience members who stopped me to say what a good time they were having; seeing people sitting in the cafe area chatting about the events; seeing happy, engrossed children (including two of my grand-daughters) at the library events; hearing our very moving winning short story entries, visiting our very atmospheric Sea Change installation at Landguard Fort. Thank you every one – audience, speakers, helpers. – Meg (Festival Director)

I think we’re safe to say that this was our biggest and best festival yet with lots of packed events and a real buzz at The Orwell Hotel and Felixstowe Library. A HUGE thank you to: all of our speakers (we hope you had fun!); our wonderful Sponsors and Funders; The Orwell Hotel; Felixstowe Library; Stillwater Books; Breeze Event Production; all the shops who took part in the Book Trail and of course our merry band of volunteers. Did you know that the festival is entirely organised and run by volunteers? Meg Reid heads up a team who work throughout the year to put on the festival and we’re always on the lookout for more enthusiastic team members. Find out more here if you’d like to come on board.

Keeeeeep reading!

Hannah and the team

It’s here!

24 June 2016 By HR

It’s been 12 months in the making and tonight the fourth Felixstowe Book Festival kicks off!

Tonight we have Luiz Morais and Gabriela Kozyra bringing a musical taste of Brazil to The Orwell Hotel in an event that is sure to get you in the festival mood. Then we’ll see you again at 9:30am tomorrow for our opening event with Giles Merritt and a lively discussion on Europe. Just half an hour later the Young People’s programme opens over at Felixstowe Library with last year’s Carnegie Medal winner Tanya Landman. Then we’re into a steady stream of fascinating, exciting events at both venues for the next 36 hours!

Don’t forget to pop down to Landguard Fort at some point over the weekend to see Lily Hunter Green’s specially commissioned art installation Sea Change. We also have the Book Trail happening all weekend so don’t forget to get a copy at the Library or the Orwell.

Just a little reminder that due to circumstances beyond our control the following programme changes have taken place:

– Rose Tremain has had to cancel but Nicola Upson will now be interviewing acclaimed biographer Laura Thompson in this slot instead.

– Harry Freedman’s session on The Murderous History of Bible Translations is cancelled but instead we have Lucy Popescu talking about her anthology A Country of Refuge.

– The Killer Women can no longer join us for their workshop or panel event.

– Oxygen Books can no longer be with us to talk about their literary travel guides.

All refunds and replacements will go through the Wolsey and if you haven’t been contacted to arrange this then please visit the ticket desk during the festival.

Tickets will still be available online until midnight on the day before the event takes place. Any left over tickets will be available from the ticket desk in the Orwell Hotel. Tickets for Young People’s events will only be available from Felixstowe Library.

Have a wonderful weekend and don’t forget to tweet and facebook us your highlights!

Hannah and the team

Books, Books, Books Galore!

23 June 2016 By HR

Hello Booklovers,

Only 24 hours to go until our 2016 festival gets underway! We’re racing around here at Festival HQ making sure authors know where to go, volunteers have their schedules, Book Trail clues are set and all those other last minute bits and bobs are slotting into place. A big job at this stage is coordinating our book stall and once again we are delighted to have Felixstowe’s independent bookseller, Stillwater Books, running our stall, with help from our lovely volunteers.

Will who runs Stillwater and our volunteer Anna have been busy bees over the last few weeks making sure that we have plenty of copies of our visiting authors’ books ready for you all to purchase at the weekend. This year the stall will be bigger and better than ever and we’ll have the author signing station right nearby. We also still have some very stylish tote bags available to put those many purchases in 😉 For children’s events at the library we will have books on sale at each event.

Rather appropriately this week is Independent Booksellers Week so a big shout-out to independent book shops every where who provide a unique shopping experience and keep books on our high street! We’re lucky to have Stillwater Books in Felixstowe and we also have two excellent second-hand bookshops. Treasure Chest and Poor Richard’s Books are a must during your visit to the Festival this weekend. Both of these shops are total mazes, full of nooks and crannies stuffed with books. You’ll struggle to leave empty-handed.
We also have a host of charity shops in the town with a wonderful selection of second-hand books. They’ve been getting into the spirit with some Festival-themed window displays:

Age UK, Red Cross and Sense have all gone for a patriotic backdrop to their book displays!

Basic, RSPCA and Cancer Research proudly displaying our posters

It is worth mentioning that Elaine Coltham is going to be signing her poetry book at the RSPCA charity shop at 1 o’clock on Saturday. The poetry book is all about animals and all the proceeds will be going to the Martlesham animal centre.

These fabulous windows from EACH and St Elizabeth Hospice are our favourites!

So there you have it, Felixstowe is a booklovers paradise this weekend!

Bookish best,

Hannah and the team

A View From… the heart of things

A View From… Felixstowe Library

A View From… the director’s chair

Just a little reminder that due to circumstances beyond our control the following programme changes have taken place:

Join the conversation…