Stoke Newington Literary Festival 2011
The exclusively literary festival enters a second year with an eclectic series of talks, readings, workshops and one-off events designed to amuse, inspire and challenge.
The exclusively literary festival enters a second year with an eclectic series of talks, readings, workshops and one-off events designed to amuse, inspire and challenge.
2011 is the second Stoke Newington Literary Festival, created to celebrate the area’s long and influential literary history and to keep the spirit of radical thinking, debating and story-telling alive.
This year, we’ll be shining the spotlight on some of the people that have helped put Stoke Newington on the cultural map, in particular Edgar Allen Poe and Mary Wollstonecraft.
We’ll also be bringing you some of the UK’s most exciting debut novelists, a superb line-up of poets who’ll be popping up at events throughout the weekend as well as a programme that covers ska, dissent, cycling, punk, gangs and ghosts.
Most of all we hope you enjoy the festival. Bring some friends. Make a day – or two – or three – of it. Try some events that you might not previously have considered – you might discover something you like.
Our writers, authors, storytellers and performers all share the love of the written and spoken word and their enthusiasm is infectious. Whether they’re discussing historical figures, murder, food, music, their country of birth, the way they view the world or beer, you’re sure to find something to inspire you.
We’d love to hear from you so let us know what you think. What did you enjoy? What would you like to see again? What did we miss? Email with your feedback at info@stokenewingtonliteraryfestival.com.
John will be delighting everyone from age 3 upwards with his hilarious songs, dotty poems and possibly something about spectacles
Buy ticketsChris Wormell is a self-taught artist, and the winner of the Booktrust Early Years Award for The Best Picture Book for children up to five-years-old in 2010 with One Smart Fish
Buy ticketsKnife & Packer are an author-illustrator team who bring a distinctive sense of style and humour to fiction and non-fiction
Buy ticketsJoin Karin Littlewood as she reads from her new story ‘Immi’
Buy ticketsCome and meet four members of the Chainsaw Gang, a team of rising star authors of awesome horror and fantasy for young readers
Buy ticketsJoin celebrated author Sally Gardner as she introduces her books for young readers
Buy ticketsJoin Arsenal Football Club’s Community coaches for fun football stories, games and riddles
Buy ticketsLouise Yates began drawing pictures to go with the stories she wrote for school and, at a young age, began telling people that she wanted to be a children’s book illustrator
Buy ticketsHotly tipped horror author Will Hill will talk about his debut teen novel, Dept 19 and how he got published
Little Britain star, David Walliams talks about his hilarious, touching and extraordinary new fable, Billionaire Boy
Buy ticketsThe MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington raises the curtain on the weekend’s programme
Buy ticketsThe son of Polish-Jewish immigrants, Alexander Baron was raised in Hackney and campaigned against fascists in the East End in the 1930s
Buy ticketsDiane Abbott MP hosts some of the leading writers from the African Diaspora
Henry Hemming travelled the country discovering the many benefits of groups to both the individual and society
Buy ticketsCome celebrate the 107th birthday of Dr. Seuss
Stella and Elif will share their experiences and their fascinating takes on contemporary Istanbul and historical Constantinople
Buy ticketsDo you know the difference between a Nostromian Weevil and a Zyglon Tentacle Beast? Could you resist an invasion of Purple Peekons? And can you outwit a Fantabbydosian?
Learn about the art of storytelling and perhaps be inspired to write your own novel
Come and join other cycling enthusiasts at this celebration of the bicycle
Buy ticketsOliver currently lives in New York and on this special visit to the UK, will discuss his work and his new book Up and Down, an unforgettable story about friendship, love and reaching for your dreams
Buy ticketsIn his new book, The Country House Revealed: A Secret History of the British Ancestral Home, Dan uncovers the history of six of Britain’s greatest private country houses
Buy ticketsA critically acclaimed debut, Max Schaefer’s novel Children of the Sun explores Britain’s sexual-political past
Buy ticketsJournalist Gavin Knight, author of newly published Hood Rat, spent the last year embedded on the front line of hidden, inner-city gang wars around the UK, including right here in Hackney
Buy ticketsWe may all envy youth, but society is giving young people an increasingly rough ride
Cult novelist Dan is one of Stoke Newington resident Stewart’s favourite authors, so we brought them together and told them they could do whatever they want
Buy ticketsAlex Clark talks to 3 authors who’ve been shortlisted, hotlisted and generally tipped for stardom
Buy ticketsThe lovechild of food writer and Guardian journalist Tim Hayward, Fire & Knives is a food and drink magazine with a difference
Buy ticketsA very special afternoon as Stoke Newington honours one of its most famous literary residents
Buy ticketsHow did the working class go from salt of the earth to scum of the earth?
Buy ticketsWhen John White was killed by a bolt of lightning in 1964, the football world was rocked by the tragedy
Buy ticketsThe New Libertine movement stands for human experience in its glorious, messy, complex entirity, and stands against everything that is blank, bleak, and brutal, one dimensional or slick in contemporary culture, especially current literary culture
Buy ticketsDonut Press is an independent poetry publisher founded in 2001
Louise Wener shot to fame as lead singer of nineties band Sleeper, and discovered discovered what it was like to be a woman in the laddish world of Britpop
Buy ticketsCome and find out about local projects celebrating Britain’s first feminist
Buy ticketsTwo legends from the alternative comedy scene of the early 1980s reunite to compare autobiographies
Buy ticketsBeneath the paving stones there is the beach three authors and one musician bring the seaside to Stoke Newington
Buy ticketsThe Society for Curious thought has been running a literary installation project at Lemon Monkey for a couple of months
A performance of the Bard’s meditation on the issues of mercy, justice, and truth and their relationship to pride and humility
Buy ticketsOut of Step Promotions presents a night featuring some of the most exciting spoken-word and poetry artists in the UK right now
Buy ticketsSony Award-winning comedian Miriam Elia and bestselling humour writer Bruno Vincent introduce a night of comedy, books and music
Buy ticketsWatch one of the finest horror films ever made, starring Vincent Price, as the evil Prince Prospero
Buy ticketsPick up writing tips and tricks at this family workshop including how to think up a story, character ideas, how to plan and plot your stories and what to do if you get stuck
We bring together two authors who have each charted a thousand year history of people getting stroppy
Buy ticketsWhat ale should you drink while reading Dostoyevsky?
Buy ticketsThis is an intimate event in which Linda talks about her work and her inspiration
Buy ticketsIain Sinclair & Barry Miles talk about their own individual take on London’s counterculture
Buy ticketsTwo of the finest exponents of urban fiction come together at the same event
Buy ticketsThis is an ode to radio, those records and anyone who’s ever sought solace in wireless
Buy ticketsAt the Storytails event yesterday, top creative writing tutor Karen Boren tutored attendees on techniques to improve their fiction. Today, we regroup to hear and discuss the results, from both professional and amateur writers. A great event to hear and participate in writing that’s been generated over the festival weekend.
Four of Britain’s greatest living writers on the subject of popular music gathered under the same roof
Buy ticketsIn an age when Thought Crime has been made real and people are arrested for dressing up as a zombie bride on the royal wedding day, urgent questions need to be asked about our right to protest and how it is being compromised
Buy ticketsFive exciting new voices take the stage to read from their debut novels
Buy ticketsYou bring a book you’d like to swap with another, we have a drink and a piece of cake, and people pitch for books that they like the sound of
Buy ticketsKatharine discusses her new book Scapegoat with disability campaigner and consultant Richard Rieser
Kit Wright is the author of more than twenty-five books, for both adults and children
Come along and hear first hand the exploits, anecdotes and points of view of one of Britain’s most colourful and entertaining characters
Buy ticketsAn astonishing panel of some of crime’s most exciting writers
Buy ticketsI Left my Tent in San Francisco, tells the story of Emma’s disastrous adventures travelling to the USA with her best friend Dee
Buy ticketsImmigration into the UK from the West Indies helped promote the rapid spread of ska across London, some of which featured in this very building
Buy ticketsBuying and using your lit fest tickets.
Whether you’ve already bought your tickets or are still deciding which events to go to, there are some things you can do to make the most of the festival. If you’ve already bought your tickets: The box office stopped sending out paper tickets on Tuesday of this week so if you haven’t received yours in [… read more]
We’re unapologetically quite fond of beers at LitFest Towers, what with one of us doubling up as Beer Writer of the Year in 2010 and all. We think we’re pretty unique amongst literary festivals to have 2 of our very own specially brewed beers available over the festival weekend. Redemption Brewery invited Liz from the [… read more]
We can’t have a literary festival without mentioning the Library. Hackney Council is working as hard as it can to protect its libraries in the face of massive cuts in funding from central government, and whilst the library service isn’t exempt from budget-balancing that needs to be done, it needs all the help we can [… read more]
