Welcome!
Happy New Year, dear friends, and welcome to another year of reading, writing and thinking in Birmingham and the West Midlands.
Image courtesy of Kathryn Cartwright
We have so much planned for 2012.
There is still time to enter our Short Story Competition to win £100 courtesy of us and Toye, Kenning & Spencer. The theme is Clocks (apt as the days finally get a little longer and the New Year ebbs in) and the deadline January 31st 2012.
Very soon we will be announcing details of a new series of storytelling events in partnership with Ikon Gallery, which begin on Sunday 19th February 2012.
We are busy planning for October, too, and as the year goes on we will be telling you what you can expect from the 2012 Festival which will be running from the 4th – 13th October. We are in talks with a possible venue for the next all night writing experience, as well as talking to some wonderful writers we hope to welcome to the city in the Autumn. There will be creative writing workshops during the day, too, along with another Fringe festival and Bookshop. Join our mailing list to make sure you get our programme as soon as it is released.
You may know by now that we are part of Writing West Midlands. As the region’s literature development agency there is plenty planned for the year ahead, including a new writer development programme, workshops, training courses and networking opportunities. If you are a writer, or work in the writing industry, make sure you are a member of their mailing list. Writing West Midlands will begin producing a printed programme of events and opportunities from Spring 2012 so make sure you give us your postal address, too.
Dutch Poets closing the Festival 2011
If you are a young writer (or the parent of one!) you might be interested in our various opportunities for children and young people. Write On! is a programme of in school, out of school and online creative writing groups and workshops, led by professional writers for primary and secondary ages. There are more details about these at www.writingwestmidlands.org/writeon/
Please keep us bookmarked, and follow us on twitter and Facebook to keep up to date with the latest programming news and event details. We also blog on this website, review books and recommend things for you to read or go to.
More about the Festival’s roots…
We love reading, writing and thinking.
The Festival is a place for ideas and conversation, bringing writing to the fore in its capacity to make us question our worlds.
Alan Hollinghurst at Ikon Gallery
We run events, workshops and other literature related activities around Birmingham
If you are a writer looking to get involved with the Festival please read our Information for Writers.
Support us…
If you love the Festival as much as we do, please consider supporting us by becoming a Friend. For a small fee you can enable us to grow and develop the Festival year on year, get discounts in our bookshop and much more.
