Free LitFests from the comfort of your armchair

Covid-19 may have curtailed travelling and cancelled face-to-face events, but it has opened a plethora of online talks, lectures, and instructive how-to demonstrations, most available on YouTube.

For the writer and the reader the Society of Authors has run a series of Afternoon Tea With… as well as useful talks on marketing for writers. Lockdown Litfest is currently showcasing talks with authors, and York Festival of Ideas took its annual festival online with talks on a wide range of subjects. All of these and many more are free to view. Others, Jericho Writers, being one, are paid events.

It was while trawling the site of York Festival of Ideas, that Linda Acaster came across a talk by writer Edoardo Albert and York archaeologist Paul Gething: Warrior: A Life of War in Anglo-Saxon Britain centreing on a cemetery dig just outside the walls of  Bamburgh Castle. It turned out to be so entertaining that she is currently devouring the book.

Read more on Linda Acaster's website.

Feeding the Creative Soul - LitFests

LitFests are ostensibly for readers, but writers are readers too. We just view information from a different slant, which comes in handy when the creative well is coughing up an intermittent flow.

The 2019 Festival of Words brought a multitude of writers to libraries around the East Riding of Yorkshire, some well known, others trying to carve themselves a household name. It is this latter group which often proves the more rewarding. For a start, they tend not to be swamped by adoring fans, and they remember how it was to struggle and are therefore more open to answering a question or having a quick chat.

As with all enterprises, to gain the most from a LitFest go prepared. Make time to read one of the authors’ previous works. This in itself can spark our own writing: the pacing used in a passage of description, the way a confrontation is handled. It also widens our pool of genres and sub-genres.

Discussion panels on a fixed subject can prove eye-opening, as happened during the Gothic Thrillers event. Not only did I leave with new authors to read, but with a marketing angle I hadn’t previously considered.

Linda Acaster