Spread the word: Southbank Centre’s London Literature Festival is in full swing. Judith Schrut thinks it’s a real page turner.
The 13th London Literature Festival, on this week at the Southbank Centre, is packed with live readings, book launches, debates, workshops, poetry, music and family events, many free.
I’ve particularly been enjoying the wonderful in-conversation events with top writers. These have included Armistead Maupin, LGBTQ activist and author of the trailblazing Tales from the City; Afro-American poet and living legend Nikki Giovanni and Bernardine Evaristo, recent co-winner of the Booker Prize for Girl, Woman, Other. Deeply moving and thought-provoking was a performance with music of Philippe Sands’ East West Street, co-narrated by the author and based on his international bestseller on human rights, genocide and the Nazi Nuremberg trials.
The Festival is well known for its range of events for children. This year’s include a modern take on the Russian folk tale, Baba Yaga, a staging of Michael (War Horse) Morpurgo’s fabulous I Believe in Unicorns and a talk by Eoin Colfer, global bestselling author of the Artemis Fowl books, introducing his adventurous new spin-off series the Fowl Twins.
If any of that tickles your tastebuds, you can still grab tickets for this weekend’s Festival finale, including an exclusive appearance by Anthony Daniels, C-3PO in Star Wars and author of a new memoir on life as the most famous Droid in movie history, and Once Upon Our Times: Fairy Tales Retold, a celebration of the timeless and universal world of folk and fairy tales, featuring dramatic readings by British actors Paapa Essiedu (Hamlet, Black Earth Rising), Toby Jones (Detectorists, Berberian Sound Studio) and Tina Chiang (Chimerica, Bodyguard).
The 13th London Literature Festival, 17-27 October 2019 at the Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1. Find out more at Southbank Centre.co.uk.
