Clifton LitFest is back for a weekend of literary discussions, readings, workshops and performance

Clifton LitFest returns on November 15 for a packed weekend programme of authors, poets, workshops and performance in venues dotted around Clifton Village.

Organised annually by Friends of Clifton Centre and Library (FOCCAL), the event is now in its fifth year, and is notable for the considerable breadth of subjects and styles represented.

The 2024 programme spans local history to crime writing; green poetry and activism to political satire; historical and contemporary fiction to photography; prehistoric adventure to technology; and heritage printmaking to archival film screenings.

Carol Vorderman

Clifton resident Carol Vorderman opens the festival with a summation of her much-publicised fight to drive out the former Tory government, and her new book NOW WHAT? On a Mission to Fix Broken Britain.

Environmental campaigner Chris Packham provides the second keynote speech of the day, setting out the urgency of the ecological emergency we face and the action that must be taken to protect our planet.

Chris Packham

Saturday highlights include Ultimate Dinosaurs, an interactive family show from Professor Ben Garrod, and multi-award-winning author Kate Mosse in conversation with Sara Davies about the final volume in her Joubert Family Chronicles: The Map of Bones.

Acclaimed Bristol novelist Moses McKenzie will be discussing Fast by the Horns, the follow-up to his astonishing and much-garlanded debut An Olive Grove in Ends, which he wrote at the age of 21.

Moses Mckenzie

The final day of the festival begins with a poetry workshop from poet and senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, Kim Moore, exploring the idea of the house “both as a literal and a psychological space”.

Other highlights include Charlotte Philby with her new crime fiction novel The End of Summer, and Noreen Masud’s discussion of her new book, A Flat Life, which honours the flatlands of Britiain “from Orford Ness to Orkney”, while offering “a reckoning with the painful, hidden histories they contain”.

Charlotte Philby

Jonathan Dimbleby talks Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the War, in conversation with David Parker, as well as featuring on a panel with Dawn Primarolo and Ruth Winstone to discuss Tony Benn’s Defining Moments.

A trio of Bristol-based crime writers, Emily Koch (If I Die Before I Wake), Bryan J Mason (An Old Tin Can) and Gilly Macmillan (The Fall) will be talking to Jade Chandler, publishing director of Baskerville (a thriller imprint at Hachette), about the importance of embedding a sense of place in their work.

(l-r): Emily Koch, Bryan J Mason, Gilly Macmillan and Jade Chandler

And rounding off the weekend, singer-songwriter Phil King makes a welcome return to Clifton LitFest, with a performance at Clifton Library.

Tickets for all 50 events are on sale now, priced from £12.

Phil King

Clifton LitFest 2024 is on November 15-17 at multiple venues across Clifton. For the full programme and tickets to individual events, visit www.foccal.com/litfest.

All photos: FOCCAL (main photo: poetry workshop facilitator Kim Moore)

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