Birmingham Book Festival
Our annual literature festival has been running since 1999. For more details please visit the website http://www.birminghambookfestival.org
You can also keep up to date by joining the festival’s Facebook page and Twitter @bhambookfest
The main Birmingham Book Festival runs in October each year and also has a smaller celebration of literature in the spring called The Spring Thing and solo events running throughout the year. The festival features writing workshops, performances, events and book launches from UK and international writers.
About the Birmingham Book Festival
The Birmingham Book Festival was founded in 1999 and is a not for profit Company Limited Under Guarantee (Company No. 6264124) and is now managed by Writing West Midlands. It is part funded by Arts Council England and Birmingham City Council.
The festival was set-up to encourage the city of Birmingham to engage with words – written, read or otherwise. It has evolved into a literature-focused arts organisation which recognises the value of participatory activity, inspirational thinking and creative writing. While its predominant delivery is of writing and reading based activities, it continues to pioneer unusual and innovative arts experiences which connect the West Midlands with the communities in its midst.
We want to hear everybody’s voice. While we do utilise the typical literature event model, we also like to challenge it, by creating events where the ordinary, intelligent, inquisitive reader is the focus. It is our experience that the opportunity for discussion and argument – as well as reading, writing and thinking – is an arts experience that is especially important to the people of the West Midlands. It is this that, along with a desire to support the growing professional writing sector in the region, informs the spirit of our yearly programme.
We are continuously trying new ways of making reading, writing and thinking happen. We place workshops in spaces previously unexplored by the arts. We create events that connect words with other art forms and that take literature beyond the confines of the book. We have a commitment to diversity which is reflected in our programme and the sense of inclusion we aim to protect through the creation of free events. We use activities to address politics and policy, using writers to explore the issues that underpin the life of a modern region.
We put our money where our mouth is. All of the Festival team identify as readers and writers and endeavour to programme events that we are personally passionate about. We stay awake during our all-night writing workshops; we have read (and admired) the books our writers have written; we talk to our audiences and participants; we take their feedback seriously and strive to improve the Festival’s offer year on year.
Birmingham is not easily identified as a literary city, and is very different from the towns and cities that host some of the UK’s commercially successful literary festivals. The Birmingham Book Festival doesn’t compete with these festivals: we want to be different. We offer creative use of limited resources and imaginative programming to reflect the diversity of our audiences and the urban landscape that we occupy. We work with, rather than against, the complex environment the city and the region presents.
We want to provide exciting and distinctive events and activities which will make Birmingham and the West Midlands a reading, writing and thinking city and region.
Other Festivals in the West Midlands
For information on other literature festivals in the West Midlands and beyond, please visit our Literature Festivals page.