Culture /

Queen’s Park Book Festival: It’s Gonna Be Lit

The 2018 line-up unveiled....

This post may contain affiliate links. Learn more

0

From 30 June to 1 July, Queen’s Park in Kilburn will be jam packed with over 40 events in a celebration of local, national, international and new writers.

What’s better than a summer’s day and Zadie Smith?

Queen’s Park Book Festival: It’s Gonna Be Lit

Zadie-Smith--Photo-credit--Dominique-Nabokov

Dominique Nabokov.

Queen’s Park Book Festival offers a weekend steeped in current affairs, politics, fiction, stage, screen, sport, music, cookery, poetry and more. Events include refugee stories, celebrating the 70th anniversary of the NHS, The Man Booker at 50, ‘Bad Girls and Brave Women: Reflection son a Centenary’, reality politics with Rachel Johnson & Stanley Johnson, plus ‘Ten Years in the Death of the Labour Party’.

C&TH Books to Read Before You Die

Literary giants and local legends Zadie Smith (Feel Free) and Nick Laird (Modern Gods) will join academic and critic John Mullan to talk about their lives in writing and to read from new works.

Three novelists, Susie Boyt, Tessa Hadley and Lucy Hughes-Hallett, will talk about the importance of reading to them as writers. Susie’s novel Love and Fame, Tessa’s short story collection The Past, and Lucy’s novel Peculiar Ground are all recently published in paperback.

Man Booker shortlisted author Philip Hensher (The Friendly Ones) and young novelist Joe Dunthorne (The Adulterants) will discuss their most recent books with John Mullan.

Celebrating 50 years of the Man Booker Prize, 2013 winner Eleanor Catton (The Luminaries) will interrogate the importance of prizes to writers with former Man Booker judge Stuart Kelly and member of the Advisory Committee for the Man Booker Derek Johns.

Bringing together stage and screen visionaries, English theatre director and film producer Nicholas Hytner (Balancing Act) and actor and music historian Simon Russell Beale will allow their 30-year long conversation about Shakespeare to spill out on stage.

The Wellcome Book Prize 2018 Shorlist

There will be free children’s events throughout the weekend with authors including Ben LyttletonAlex Bellos (Football School: The Amazing Quiz Book ), Yuval Zommer (Bugs and BeastsKevin Tsang (Sam Wu is NOT afraid of ghosts), Katherine Webber (Wing Jones) and Lou Kuenzler (Not Yet Zebra)

Tickets will be going on sale on 12 May at qpbookfest.com, where you can also view the full line up.

What’s on in London this Week? The Town Culture Diary