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Hundreds of events for adults, teenagers and children feature authors, illustrators, musicians, poets, policians, thinkers, prize-winners and rising stars every August.
Join author and illustrator Rob Biddulph for a fun-packed hour. Rob helped everyone stay creative in lockdown with his #DrawWithRob videos – now you can join in live with one of his famous draw-alongs! Learn about Rob’s journey from budding artist...
The publishing world might not have predicted that a book about brain surgery would sell hundreds of thousands of copies. But when neurosurgeon Henry Marsh embarked on a writing career, readers were enthralled by the wisdom and candour of Do No Harm....
Join Michael Morpurgo, the king of stories, for this festival of poems celebrating our animal friends, Carnival of the Animals. Inspired by the comic French musical, Michael has packed even more beasts into his book with everyone from turtles to tigers...
Imagine trying to escape from Auschwitz as a teenager, hiding for three days, while 3,000 SS and their bloodhounds search for you. This is the story of Rudolf Vrba, whose report on the atrocity of Auschwitz reached Roosevelt, Churchill and the Pope,...
If graphic novels have historically been overlooked by the literary establishment, then Nick Drnaso’s work is changing things. Sabrina was the first graphic novel to be longlisted for the Booker Prize. Now Acting Class confirms Drnaso as one of...
Mohsin Hamid joins us on our opening day to discuss The Last White Man. This blistering novel sees Anders, a white man, wake up to find he has turned a ‘deep and undeniable brown’, with clear echoes of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Hamid’s previous...
One of Ireland’s finest journalists shares an intimate account of how the country has changed during his lifetime. There are many contradictions in Ireland’s history and the title of Fintan O’Toole’s personal history, We Don’t Know Ourselves,...
To write on sex, consent and desire after the cultural shifts of the last decade is not easy – but this event brings together two writers who have penned unflinching books on these topics. The Right to Sex by Amia Srinivasan and Tomorrow Sex Will Be...
In Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet, readers were treated to something rarely seen since Dickens: novels engaging with events as they unfolded – including Brexit, migration and climate change. With Companion Piece, Smith takes another bracing dive into...
One of the UK’s most fearsomely talented screenwriters, Abi Morgan has worked on projects including The Iron Lady and Shame, which garnered both headlines and awards. Today, she reveals her own powerful story of survival. In This is Not a Pity Memoir,...
The line-up for the 2022 Book Festival is revealed 
