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Eleanor Catton and John Agard will be hosting events at the Essex Book Festival this year, which will take place in over 40 venues across the county from Thursday 1st June to Saturday 1st July.
The programme for the festival spans everything from history and politics, to art and environmentalism. One of the key themes of the 2023 festival is The Great Tide, commemorating the 70th anniversary of The Great Flood that devastated communities on the Essex Coast in 1953.
The programme celebrates "literature in motion", inviting audiences to attend events on the move and in over 40 venues across Essex, including The LV18 Lightship and a floating radio museum moored on Harwich Quay.
Booker Prize winner Catton will be discussing her new novel Birnam Wood (Granta Books), while author and performance poet John Agard will conduct a selection of readings, including from his 2022 children’s book When Creature Met Creature (Scallywag Press).
Writer and comic artist for The Beano (Farshore) Kev F Sutherland will be hosting a Comic Art Masterclass, and Mat Osman will be discussing The Ghost Theatre (Bloomsbury Publishing), his punk re-imagining of Elizabethan London through the eyes of a clairvoyant, bird-worshipping protagonist and an unlikely theatre troupe.
Staying on the theme of story creation, Sam Scott, author of the Sophie Spirit trilogy (Stanhope Books), will be giving writing tips for how to design and develop a believable character, and how to build a plot and arc.
At the launch event, Guardian columnist and broadcaster Polly Toynbee will be discussing her latest book, An Uneasy Inheritance: My Family and Other Radicals (Atlantic Books). Labour MP and shadow health secretary Wes Streeting will also be in conversation with Professor Pam Cox from the University of Essex.
This year marks the sixth edition of Essex Writers House, a strand of Essex Book Festival hosted by arts organisation, Metal. Hosted at Chalkwell Hall in Southend-on-Sea, at Essex Writers House 2023, workshops and events will be offered to writers and readers
Ros Green, director of Essex Book Festival, said: “From this year’s 70-mile Radical Pilgrimage which traces The Saffron Trail from Southend to Saffron Walden – and which will be led by artist-writer Lora Aziz – to the many author events taking place across the county involving the likes of James Naughtie, Robin Ince, Eleanor Catton, Polly Toynbee and Ruth Ware; to the fabulous Essex Writers House hosted by Metal in Southend overlooking the Mouth of the Thames Estuary and The Human Library at Chelmsford Library, Essex is going to be buzzing with words and stories this June.”