Birmingham Literature Festival opens with five days of books and ideas

Birmingham Literature Festival opens today, Thursday 8 October, with five days of talks, readings and conversations with writers, poets and thinkers at venues across the city centre.

The festival runs until Monday 12 October, with a Readers' Day as part of the programme.

Where it happens

Events take place at venues including:

• the Birmingham Rep, beside the Library of Birmingham on Centenary Square;
• the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire on Jennens Road;
• the Birmingham and Midland Institute;
• Birmingham Cathedral;
• the Priory Rooms.

The festival says all its venues are accessible, and visitors with particular access needs can contact individual venues for more information.

Highlights

Among the events at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire are En Pointe, Off Kilter, with the writer Thomas Glave; Pathetic Masculinity: Putting the Feeling into Fiction, with Taylor Burns and Keiran Goddard; and Writing Nature, with the poet Gregory Leadbetter, the nature writers Paul Evans and Brett Westwood, and the gardener and writer Alys Fowler.

Local writers feature strongly. The programme includes Martin Kennedy Yates and Kate Mascarenhas, both graduates of Birmingham City University's creative writing MA, and Ayan Aden, the outgoing Birmingham Poet Laureate.

Free bus travel

Ticket holders can travel to the festival free by bus. When you book a ticket through the festival's website, you are sent a link to register for the scheme, which is supported by the region's transport authority and the Department for Transport. People who have used the scheme before are not eligible again.

Volunteers and students

Students from Birmingham City University are volunteering at events and creating social media content around the programme, getting first-hand experience of the literary world.

About the festival

Birmingham Literature Festival is a project of the regional literature development charity and is an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation. It works with partners and venues across the city and presents live events as well as digital and online activity.

A city of writers

Birmingham has a long literary history. JRR Tolkien grew up in the city, and Sarehole Mill and Moseley Bog are said to have inspired places in Middle-earth. The city has produced poets including Benjamin Zephaniah, who grew up in Handsworth, and has its own Poet Laureate and Young Poet Laureate. The Library of Birmingham, one of the largest public libraries in Europe, houses important collections, including one of the world's finest Shakespeare collections.

Why festivals matter

Literature festivals give readers the chance to hear writers talk about their work, ask questions and discover authors they might not otherwise find. For writers, they are a chance to meet readers and sell books, and for the city they bring visitors into venues and businesses in the centre. This year's festival comes in the same week that the Canadian poet Anne Carson won the Nobel Prize in Literature, a reminder of the reach that poetry can still have.

Tickets

Tickets and the full programme are available on the festival's website. Some events are free, and many sell out, so booking ahead is advised.