The Queen’s Park Book Festival, set for August 30 and 31, will celebrate the literary history of the area.
The festival will welcome Booker Prize-winning author Alan Hollinghurst, the BBC’s chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet, and award-winning authors Geoff Dyer, Hanif Kureishi, Philip Hoare, and Kit de Waal, among others.
Mrs Austen and Mr Austen explores untold family ties at Chiswick Book Festival (Image: Chiswick Book) The unique Queen’s Park Community Tent will once again serve as a platform for nurturing local talent, supporting local artists, and partnering with local charities, featuring a variety of artists, including local refugees, young poets, and emerging authors.
The Chiswick Book Festival, running from September 10 to 15, will mark the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth with Gill Hornby, president of the Jane Austen Society and author of Miss Austen.
This year’s festival will also commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two, with Rosanna Greenstreet discussing her new book, Dear Loll: A Wartime Marriage in Letters.
QPBF hosts leading authors and community voices in historic London setting (Image: QPBF) Former foreign secretary and chancellor Jeremy Hunt, Labour politician Alan Johnson, and journalists Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire will speak on politics and current affairs.
The 10-day Wimbledon Bookfest will begin on October 16, featuring literary figures such as Rupert Everett, Jung Chang, Joanna Page, Adam Buxton, Elif Shafak, Irvine Welsh, Alan Hollinghurst, David Nicholls, John Cooper Clarke, Susie Dent, Lemn Sissay, Ed Davey, Jay Rayner, and Lady Hale.
Highlights of the festival include a new food and drink-themed segment, ‘Table Talk’, featuring conversations with culinary personalities like Thomasina Miers, Sam Holland, Olly Smith, Bee Wilson, Clodagh McKenna, and Pizza Pilgrims.
The South East London Book Festival, running from October 16 to November 20, returns for its second year, aiming to host 50 authors, including Michele Roberts, Jacqueline Crooks, Kelechi Okafor, Abigail Dean, Lisa Smith, Evie Wyld, and Vida Adamczewski.
Non-fiction events include talks with Julia Hawkins on loneliness, Alice Wilkinson on ‘How to Stay Sane in a House Share’, and Nicole Ocran and Emma Slade Edmondson, authors of ‘The Half of It: A new, powerful discussion of race, identity and political polarisation through the lens of the mixed-race experience’.
The festival will take place in some of SE London’s most popular bookshops, including Review, Rye Books, Chener Books, and Morocco Bound, with local restaurants Ganapati and Persepolis also participating, along with the returning Peckhamplex.
Tickets will go on sale in August, with proceeds supporting local food banks.
The Southbank Centre will host the eighteenth edition of the London Literature Festival from October 21 to November 2.
This year, the festival will feature a specially curated day of events by Mercury Prize-nominated musician and songwriter Rebecca Lucy Taylor, a.k.a Self Esteem, marking the publication of her debut book, A Complicated Woman.
The festival will also feature a host of other writers, including Adam Buxton, Alexis Wright, Bora Chung, Charlie Mackesy, Chris Kraus, Claire-Louise Bennett, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Funmi Fetto, Jackie Kay, Jimi Famurewa, Kelly Frost, Lisa Smith, Malala Yousafzai, Michael Rosen, Nikita Gill, Neoprene Genie, Nesrine Malik, Olga Ravn, Pankaj Mishra, Rachael Boast, Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben, Róisín Lanigan, Sayaka Murata, Sebastian Faulks, Simon Armitage, Zadie Smith, among others.
The London book festivals offer a broad spectrum of events for all book lovers, featuring authors, poets, historians, politicians, actors, and broadcasters.
With each festival boasting a unique programme, literary enthusiasts have a lot to look forward to in the coming months.