Age 5+
Available from 10:00 on Saturday 14 August
Plug in your headphones or turn the speakers up and snuggle down as Rachel Piercey takes you through her exciting new book of poetry, If You Go Down to the Woods Today. In this audio event, Piercey introduces Bear, and you’ll hear some of the...
Age 5+
Available from 10:00 on Saturday 14 August
Join award-winning poet Alex Wharton for this short and snappy audio event full of rhyme, rhythm and free verse, as he reads from his brand-new collection Daydreams and Jellybeans. Alex’s poems, for primary aged children, are both funny and sensitive,...
Saturday 14 August 16:00 - 17:00
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A few years ago, when asked what he sees when he looks at a map, Kei Miller answered ‘I see the things that aren’t there... maps are always interesting to me for what’s left out…’. These gaps and omissions were a key part of the celebrated...
Saturday 14 August 20:30 - 22:00
Who needs art when bombs are being dropped? Who needs culture when lives are being lost to poverty, disease, climate crisis and war? There's always a crisis somewhere on the planet, but this year it seems that devastating events have laid siege to a...
Age 9+
Sunday 15 August 11:30 - 12:15
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Michael Rosen is known around the world for his picture books and poetry full of heart and good humour. In On the Move: Poems About Migration Michael weaves his family’s personal story into his poetry, from his childhood as a first-generation Polish...
Sunday 15 August 14:30 - 15:30
'Caleb Femi is a gift to us all from the storytelling gods,' says fellow writer Max Porter. Femi’s exuberant words and talent saw him named as the first Young People’s Laureate for London in 2016, following his 2015 win at the Roundhouse Poetry...
Monday 16 August 14:30 - 15:30
Haunting, elemental and deeply charged, Robin Robertson’s writing evokes the mythology of landscapes and people, whether in Scotland or elsewhere. Most of his work takes the form of shorter poems and a new book, Grimoire, brings together some of...
Tuesday 17 August 14:30 - 15:30
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To read Shola von Reinhold’s novel LOTE is to be transported to a world of poetry, aestheticism, decadence and queer celebration. ‘People like to presume madness over style whenever they have the chance,’ it begins, as Reinhold takes readers on a...
Tuesday 17 August 16:00 - 17:00
What if Death was not a faceless skeleton with a cloak and a scythe, but a working-class Black woman who shapeshifts and who has spent the whole of eternity doing her work unseen? Worn out and exhausted, Death wishes to unburden herself of the stories...
Tuesday 17 August 20:30 - 21:30
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Following a highly successful event last year Stories & Scran returns, providing a platform for the dynamic and thought-provoking work created by our Citizen participants. Over the last 12 months, Citizen Writer in Residence Eleanor Thom and poet Leyla...
A year of transition and experimentation — the 2021 Book Festival closes 
