shortlisted

earlier today we found out that the Lichfield Festival and our long-term Principal Partner BMW Plant Hams Hall have been shortlisted in the Sustained Partnership category for this year's Jaguar Land Rover Awards for Arts & Business. All shortlists will be announced in The Birmingham Post next week, and winners will be announced at Birmingham Town Hall on 15 October.

as a sneaky wee peek for those that read this blog, the lichfield literature brochure can be found here although it has yet to go up on the festival website...

and, as at close of play today, I will be out of the office for the next two weeks doing this here.

lichfield literature

This morning the last seven tickets for Katie Adie were grabbed, which means we've sold out within a week, and we've just added another Very Hungry Caterpillar show due to demand, so over 60% of the available seats have already been booked over the four performances.

Other authors speaking include David Aaronovitch on the role of conspiracy theories in modern history; historical novelist Barbara Ewing; Lawrence Goldman, editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; crime crime writers Sophie Hannah and Peter Robinson in a Lichfield Library double bill; Tobias Hill discussing his latest novel The Hidden; historian Robert Hutchinson on the Dukes of Norfolk; Andrew Lambert on Captain John Franklin's doomed expedition (perfect, I think, for a city that honours doomed captains); Stephen Lyttelton discusses collating his father's last writings, David Charles Manners speaks about the impact of India on his life, David Nokes speaks his new biography of Samuel Johnson as a nod to the tercentenary, mathematician Ian Stewart, explorer Sara Wheeler on the arctic, Frances Wilson on Dorothy Wordsworth; and Matthew Yeo on the history of the book.
We are also holding an Open Mic event for local authors to come and share their writings.

Tickets will probably go on sale on Tuesday, but keep an eye on the festival website to be certain.

adie on sale

tickets for the Lichfield Literary Dinner with Kate Adie as guest speaker went on sale at 9am this morning, and by noon half of the available seats had already sold. Go Kate! We may need to revisit this to see whether we can fit in a few more people than we were planning...
Having just returned from leave, I am belatedly at the final stages of scheduling the Lichfield Literature programme. While we'll be in a position to announce next week the full line up of speakers, one other event that we are already spreading the word about is a puppet show to mark the 40th anniversary of Eric Carle's masterpiece The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which continues our programming of events for families and young children. There will be three performances on Friday 9 October at Wade Street Church.

death of an institution?

there were rumours floating around, and the website has been down for a little while, but having just had the opportunity to walk past, it really does seem that James Redshaw, Lichfield's independent bookshop has finally died. There is a notice in the window stating that due to the economic downturn, James Redshaw Ltd ceased trading on 30 June 2009. A few years ago it was bought out by S&J Music, a wonderful little music shop, and just over a year ago both shops moved from Dam Street to a larger premise in Bird Street. This was not one of those bookshops in which you could spend a blissful afternoon browsing the shelves and having a sneaky read, but they did pride themselves on being able to track down pretty much anything and get it in very quickly. James Redshaw was also a very strong and loyal supporter of local authors, something that will surely be missed now that they are gone.
Lichfield Festival took over the running of the Lichfield Literary Dinner in 2006, after James Redshaw had been running it incredibly successfully for 30 years. This year's Literary Dinner takes place on Friday 9 October as part of Lichfield Literature and will feature Kate Adie speaking.

clore fellowship

as it was printed in today's Lichfield Post, and as Monday's press release is readily available, I can finally mention here that I have been awarded a Clore Fellowship and will be leaving the Festival to pursue it fulltime at the end of October after this year's Lichfeld Literature.
Like the team here though, I am currently focused completely on delivering this year's festival, so I won't post more about Clore at this stage. There will be ample opportunity between the end of July and when I leave.

hit the baby, natasha

The Happiness Patrol, the young theatre company from Birmingham who will be performing their newly commissioned show Tales of Terror at the Lichfield Festival between 15-18 July, have an even newer show to do before then. Hit the Baby, Natasha! is Philip Holyman's reworking of Chekov's Three Sisters, and runs from 21 -23 May at Birmingham's Old Joint Stock Theatre. Tickets available via here.

Philip Holyman, Artistic Director of The Happiness Patrol, has previously been involved with the Festival when he rewrote Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows into Mr Toad's Prison Break, an outdoor theatre show for families, as part of last autumn's Lichfield Literature weekend.

For those that might be interested, a review of their previously sold out show Masque of the Red Death from can be found here.

orange day for the west midlands

I am new to the West Midlands Readers' Network. Having been previously oblivious to its existence, I was invited to join the committee and went to my first meeting the other week. The WMRN is an extremely active and coherent network for readers' groups right across the West Midlands, and can advise readers of any age or inclination on what like-minded people might be in their area, or support those wishing to start their own group. It commissions work, and encourages readers to commission work, and has been doing extrordinary things in the region for years.

One such thing is the third Orange Readers' Day, taking place at Birmingham's Adrian Boult Hall on 9 May. Authors attending include Kate Mosse, Joanne Harris, Sadie Jones, Charlotte Mendelson, Diana Evans, Claire Allan, Catherine O' Flynn, and Joanna Kavenna. Others might come from those currently longlisted for this year's Orange Prize for Fiction, of which Gaynor Arnold, who spoke at last year's Lichfield Literary Dinner, is one. Shortlist is announced on 24 April.

There are only 500 tickets available and 250 were already sold or allocated as at last Friday. Tickets (£5, £4 concessions/£20 for 6) are available for purchase here. [and as at today 308 tickets have been allocated]

The committee were discussing what to do to trump this for a future year. I suggested having the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction announced in Lichfield, something I've been quietly, and seemingly ineffectively, advocating for for several years. With the WMRN, it might just become possible.