Uncategorized

Hello booklovers,

I hope you are all enjoying the lovely weather of this post-festival week! As part of our festival round up posts, we would like to wish an enormous thank you to the brilliant team behind all of the technical support over the festival weekend, Breeze Events.

This fab duo, made up of the lovely Andy and Ed, worked incredibly hard over the course of the festival weekend, including the events preceding it and could be found constantly buzzing round the Orwell Hotel catering for all our behind-the-scenes needs. They provided us with all of our sound systems, microphones, computers and presentations and much, much more. We can’t thank you enough for your professionalism, patience and your excellent service, ensuring the smooth running of our festival for another year.

Bookish best,

Imogen and the festival team x

The festival is over and it started with a bang as the winners of the Short Story Competition were announced at our launch event. The judges told us that the 21 entries ‘were stronger than ever’ (Ruth Dugdall). However, there had to be winners and the overall winner was:

Ms Gillian Greenslade with ‘The Green Door Opens’ 

The judges really enjoyed this story – it is fresh and surprising. The story revolves around Royston, who is rescued from his grey world of office, commute and MacDonald’s coffee, by the mysterious Tara, who works in the payroll department. She opens the door to her green world of painting and creativity where he finds beauty and peace. A very powerful and completely absorbing story.

Mrs Greenslade received a £ 50 book voucher, an annual subscription to the Suffolk Magazine and her story will be published in the August edition.

The runner ups, who both received a subscription to the Suffolk Magazine, were:

Ms Morag Liffen with ‘Make Do and Mend‘

The judges thought this was a sweet story, a real heart-warmer – very genuine and not contrived. The writing style is very easy and unselfconscious and the judges liked the way the changing the world in this story lay in small things: daily economies, neighbourliness, engaging a child’s understanding of his wider world.

and Mr Alan Stafford with ‘Biodegradable’.

The judges loved the clever word play and verbal dexterity in this story, and its almost gleeful, dark humour. They also enjoyed the central dance metaphor, and some wonderful imagery which radiates through the story. This is someone who can really write with originality. Their only quibble was that the theme of ‘green’ is rather less defined than in other stories and for that reason they awarded it ‘runner-up’.

We congratulate all three winners and thank all of the authors for their wonderful contributions to the competition!

Hello booklovers,

I don’t know about you, but I am still completely over the moon about our brilliant festival weekend. In order to get you through this difficult post festival week, where it is dawning slowly on us all that we have to wait one whole year before our next bout of festival fun, we are going to remind you of some of the most brilliant aspects of our festival. It seems pertinent to start with a thank you to some crucial people who are essential to the smooth running of our festival each year…

Throughout the weekend you will have seen various lanyard-clad folk stationed around the festival – behold, our brilliant volunteers! We are so lucky to have such a dedicated team of people who are the backbone to our festival, dealing with all from ticket selling, to manning the information desk, to stewarding events, being members of our committee and much much more… we thank you – we couldn’t do it without you! As you can all guess booklovers, there are many complexities to our festival which have been expertly handled by our volunteers and we are so very grateful.

Here’s to more festival fun in 2020!

Bookish best,

Imogen and the Festival Team x

Hello booklovers,

WOW. What a magnificent weekend! I am sad to say that the 2019 Felixstowe Book Festival has come to a close – but what a brilliant weekend. We are all on an absolute book-filled high here at Festival HQ!

I want to say a huge THANK YOU to you all, our wonderful festival visitors. Your enthusiasm and passion for our festival is fundamental to our success and we cannot thank you enough for your time, your support and your appreciation.

If post-festival blues have already set in, fear not! Keep your eye on our blog over the coming week for some FBF 2019 round up blog posts to remind you all of a simply smashing weekend.

A very happy Monday to you all, the Felixstowe Book Festival team are now collectively lying down in a darkened room…

Bookish best,

Imogen and the festival team x

 

Hello booklovers,

The moment we have all been waiting for has arrived! The 2019 Felixstowe Book Festival is officially underway! After a barnstorming success with the fabulous Prue Leith last night, the festival weekend is now your oyster. We have a weekend ahead crammed FULL of creative writing workshops for young and old, non fiction events, historical and crime fiction events and poetry events plus a packed out programme for children and young people to boot!

We are delighted to be hosting TWO (yes two!) launch events for the 2019 festival. Head on down to the Orwell Hotel this evening to see festival favourites Martin Newell and the Hosepipe Band. This much loved group are returning to our festival to perform their ‘Greatest Hits’ package of East Anglian poems and music, which will prove for a wonderful start to the festival weekend.

Launching the 2019 children’s programme we are thrilled to welcome festival favourite Hayley Long and students from Felixstowe Academy as they showcase Felixstowe.docs. Hayley and her merry band of fantastic students have been working hard over the past few months on this special creative writing project to produce an anthology of creative writing all about our lovely home town, and tonight they will be presenting it to book festival guests. Exciting times indeed!

Don’t forget you can purchase your delicious festival books to be signed by visiting authors from the Stillwater Books stall at the Orwell Hotel. Now all that is left for me to say is… have a fantastic, book-filled festival weekend! See you on the other side…

Bookish best,

Imogen and the Festival Team x

The internet ticket booking line will close on Friday, 28 June at 4 pm. For most events you will be able to buy tickets at the venues (Orwell Hotel & Library, depending on event location) in person (subject to availability, cash & cheque only please). Events that have sold out already are marked as such on the website.

So make the most of the last 24 hours to secure those tickets!