The brand new Marlborough Literature Festival brings together some of the UK’s finest writers to celebrate literature in all its forms in the historic market town over the weekend of September 24-26.

With fine writing at its heart, the programme includes some of the UK’s best known writers as well as new and emerging talent. The programme embraces adult and children’s fiction, non-fiction, biography, journalism and poetry.

“We are delighted to be the founder sponsor of this new celebration of literature and writing,” said ALCS deputy CEO, Barbara Hayes. “The Authors’ Licensing & Collecting Society (ALCS) is a membership organisations run by writers for writers. One of the ways we promote authors’ rights is by supporting events such as the Marlborough Literature Festival to which fine writing is so important and lauded as such.”

On September 24, the weekend gets off to an interesting start. Margaret Drabble will discuss the mysterious relationship between fact and fiction with Mavis Cheek based on Ms Drabble’s recent memoir. Other non-fiction luminaries in the line-up include Lynn Barber, Valerie Grove, Anne Chisholm, Tim Dee and Rachel Polonsky. The adult fiction element of the programme includes Louise Doughty, Roma Tearne and Adam Foulds. Christopher Wakling and Paul Sussman will lead a discussion on the ups and downs of writing historical fiction.

Children’s writing is represented by Cressida Cowell who gives an illustrated talk about her highly successful Dragon books and Josh Mowll who will be discussing the do’s and don’ts of writing fiction for children and teenagers.

The award-winning sonateer and lyric poet Don Paterson will give a short talk about Shakespeare’s sonnets, the subject of his forthcoming book which offers a highly accessible and illuminating guide to these unforgettable verses first published in 1609. There is also a Poetry Café on September 26 with readings from 20 poets including The Brickwork Poets from Reading, the BlueGate Poets from Swindon, Writers in the Brewery from Cirencester and Marlborough’s Riverbank Writers. In addition there will be poets from Avebury, Chippenham and Stanton St Bernard.

“Marlborough, with its wide market street and lively personality is the perfect setting for a Literature Festival,” said Mavis Cheek, chairman of the organisers.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.