Something for everyone at literary festival

There’s something for everyone at the 2022 Essex Book Festival in the coming weeks as literature fans take part in the highlight of our county’s cultural calendar.

The 2022 schedule includes events featuring researchers from our Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies and School of Life Sciences, as well as a headline lecture by author Carole Angier at our Colchester Campus.

Essex Professors Adrian May and Philip Terry will explain everything they know about the tradition of almanacs on 4 June at Firstsite in Colchester. They’ll be joined by former Essex Professor Marina Warner for a workshop at which they’ll use words, images and music to build and grow a collective almanac, drawing on imagination and memory.

A Living Almanac is free to attend. Book your place today.

For those who want to know more about the work of Professors May and Terry, there’s also a chance to find out about their latest books on 10 June at St Leonard’s Church in Colchester.

Professor May, a writer, songwriter, teacher, performer and creative writing investigator, will talk about his book Tradition in Creative Writing: Finding Inspiration Through Your Roots which encourages writers to rediscover sources of creativity in the everyday.

Poet, translator and writer Professor Terry will talk about his book The Lascaux Notebooks, a translation of the first ever anthology of Ice Age poetry drawn from the cave drawings and inscriptions at Lascaux by Jean-Luc Champerret.

Tickets for Tradition as Innovation with Professors May and Terry cost £8 (concessions £7). Book your place today.

The latest book by Professor Jules Pretty, from the School of Life Sciences, will also be celebrated at the Festival. Sea Sagas of the North: Travels and Tales of Warming Waters interweaves prose chapters and alliterative sagas to tell stories of travels across shores, seas and islands.

Professor Pretty, who is Director of the Centre for Public and Policy Engagement, will talk about his book at the Harwich Redoubt Fort, hosted in collaboration with the Felixstowe Book Festival. It’s the second of two events on 26 June exploring nature and ancient heritages. The two-talk event starts with a talk at Felixstowe Museum by storyteller Glenys Newton and includes a trip on the Foot and Bicycle Ferry from Felixstowe to Harwich Quay.

Audiences can join Sea Sagas of the North for all or part of the day. Ticket prices start at £8 for one event. Book your place today.

Our Colchester Campus will also host one of the biggest events of the programme. Speak, Silence: In Search of WG Sebald with author Carole Angier on 28 June will explore one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century.

Carole Angier will discuss her biography, the first of the German-born writer who had close ties to East Anglia. Based on years of archival research and extensive conversations with those closest to Sebald, Speak, Silence is a portrait that pushes the boundaries of biography as its subject pushed the boundaries of fiction.

Tickets for Speak, Silence: In Search of WG Sebald cost £10 (concessions £8). Book your place today.

Essex Book Festival runs from 1 to 30 June with events across the county. See the full programme.