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Sports books festival from Harrogate team

07.02.08 Benedicte Page

The first British sports writing festival will take place this autumn, organised by the team behind the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate. The Carnegie Sporting Words Festival is scheduled for 2nd–5th October, and is set to become an annual event.

The festival programme is currently being planned by a team including Daily Mirror sports writer Oliver Holt, agent David Luxton, Richard Milner of Pan Macmillan and Tristan Jones of Yellow Jersey. Sharon Canavar, operations director of the festival, said: “It’s early days, and if you run a sports books festival at the weekend there are issues about what activities are going on, but there are some hugely exciting names in the pot.”

The festival will target men and boys, and will include a series of events in the lead-up to its October launch, run in association with the National Literacy Trust. Writer Tom Palmer will be involving fathers and sons in sporting quizzes, with football shoot-outs at the end. At the festival, events will be run in two locations­—Leeds Metropolitan University’s Carnegie Faculty of Sport and Education, and in Harrogate itself.

“There is a whole area of male readers and young readers untapped by literary festivals,” Canavar said. “We think this is something we can really carry forward over the next 10 or 15 years.”

literary festival

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