Medway River Lit's first weekend kicked off with a launch event at Chatham Library on Friday 1 November, where a large audience got to hear about what was coming up, and had a great time in the workshop taster sessions with Sam Rapp The Dyslexic Poet, Charlotte Ansell, and Michi Masumi.
Later that evening, at Coffee Republic in Chatham, at the first Poetry Friday of the festival, with Medway’s own Four Poets – Bill Lewis, Maggie Harris, Sarah Hehir and Barry Fentiman Hall, gave possibly their last performance to an enthusiastic crowd.
The first weekend of the festival (2/3 November) was headlined by Booker Prize-winning author Sir Ben Okri, who kept his audience spellbound in conversation with acclaimed playwright, scriptwriter and poet, Sarah Hehir.
Earlier that day, Megan Hunter, writer of the book that was adapted into the film ‘The End We Start From’ and Chloe Timms also talked about their climate themed novels.
On the Sunday, for those who were interested in learning more about the craft of writing, industry experts such as Neil Nixon and the Your Paper Quest team showed them down the inside track, all the while the very popular Local Authors' Book Fair gave an opportunity for local writers to put their work in the shop window! Louisa Campbell also spoke about her debut fact based novel 'Secret Street'.
Sunday was rounded off by Melissa Todd, whose hilarious anecdotes of her 30 years as a dominatrix, had the room in stiches. Melissa's latest book is 'Americaned'. You can read a guest blog from Melissa on this website. And she's interviewed on our podcast 'The River Is Lit', available on YouTube and Spotify.
Find out what else is coming up on our Events page.
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