A DECADE OF DIVERSITY from Words@ Frome Festival

We’re delighted with the tantalising array of literary events and activities on offer for this celebratory year, combining well-known names with a showcase of local talent.  Our theme is creative diversity, and you’ll find a scintillating mix of workshops, performances, talks, walks, and contests to entertain, inform, and inspire you.
 
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The Library is always a focus point for events, and it will be buzzing on the first Sunday with our wonderful Writers and Publishers Day which this year has more agents to offer one-to-one advice as well as talks on diverse aspects of authorship. Why not buy a day ticket – all this for £25, and the Short Story Competition Prizegiving too.  
You’ll find other lively author events at the Library too:

L-R Mario Reading and Bruce Hood

 On Tuesday evening, Nostradamus expert Mario Reading  will explore the seer’s most famous prophecies, while on Thursday there’s a fascinating look at the supernatural with Professor Bruce Hood, recently featured on Newsnight.

You’ll always find a few wild cards in the literary programme, events that are hard to categorise, imaginative and very typically Frome Festival.  One of these is the Arab Evening at Trinity Hall on Thursday evening, offering intellectual stimulus from readings from international-award winning writers as well as soothing our senses with Arabic food and music.  Another quirky event at Trinity Hall, earlier that day, is Desert Island Reads:

Desert Island Reads includes Lucy Diamond, David Johnson, Christine Coleman and Kevan Manwaring

eight local celebrities share a favourite literary extract and tell us why they chose it.  Come for tea and cakes and entertaining words from authors Lucy Diamond , Adrian Tinniswood and Rough Guide writer David Abram; poets Sue Boyle, David Johnson and Christine Coleman, with thespians Philip de Glanville and Keely Beresford.

N.B. David Abram will be replaced in the line-up by writer & storyteller Kevan Manwaring. A published author who co-runs Bath Writers’ Workshop, Kevan has appeared at Glastonbury Festival, Bath Literature Festival, Bath Fringe, Big Green  Gathering, Sting in the Tail Festival, and Big Green Gathering.

 If you want to get involved yourself, internationally-acclaimed poet Rose Flint  is leading a workshop at Rook Lane on Tuesday 13th in the morning:  Stones, Feathers, Bread – tracks through the wildwood is a creative response to the exhibition of illustrations by celebrated artist Corinna Sargood for Angela Carter’s Virago Book of Fairytales.  Stay around the top of town, because in the afternoon life coach Annie Lionnet  is running a fun, hands-on, workshop at Pure Moves to show you how to Create Your Ideal Life and send you home with a goody-bag of self-help materials and sky-high confidence.

Rosie Flint, Annie Lionnet

Children’s events are always an important part of our programme, and this year younger readers can enjoy Emily’s Surprising Voyage at the Library on the first Saturday at 2.30 as author Sue Purkiss takes children on her new seafaring adventure novel set on the SS Great Britain. 

 For teenage wordsmiths, there’s the innovative new free-to-enter TXTSPK poetry contest  – come along to the Library on the final Saturday afternoon to hear the winners!  And writer Sally Gander’s after-school Creative Writing Club members have been finding creative inspiration in the fairy-tale imagery in the Rook Lane exhibition, where their words and artwork will be displayed all week.
All our events are amazingly reasonably priced and several are FREE, so you can start the week with a walk down lovely historic Cheap Street, watching the Writers in Residence scribing in shop windows and cafes, all aiming to win a prize for their on-the-spot stories.  And throughout the day you’ll be treated to the ditties of the Soap Box Poets, Frome Festival’s unique street-poetry service!  Speaking of poetry, the now-famous Festival Poetry Café is at the Garden Café on Wednesday night, this year hosted by Peter Wyton the ‘Bin Bag Bard.’  Unmissable, whether you come to win the coveted title of Festival Poet Laureate (and the bottle of bubbly!) or just to listen and enjoy.