Press release: MEDWAY RIVER LIT PRESENTS A STELLAR LITERARY LINE-UP FOR ITS THIRD OUTING

Medway River Lit continues to go from strength to strength as it announces the lineup for 2025.

Launching at Chatham Library on the afternoon of 1 November, with a reading by the 2019 Young People’s Laureate For London and festival patron, Theresa Lola, then an award ceremony for Medway Youth Poet Laureate, the festival will be fulfilling its purpose once again to bring the biggest literary names to Medway while promoting the best writing that Medway itself has to offer. In the evening of the launch, you'll be able to catch Robin Ince, multi-award-winning comedian, author, broadcaster, bibliomaniac and a populariser of scientific ideas, talking about his new book ‘Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal’.

There’s a great literary line-up of poetry throughout the month with Katy Evans-Bush reading from her book ‘Joe Hill Makes His Way Into The Castle’ (one of the ten ‘best poetry books of 2024’, The Guardian: 7/11/25 ), festival joint patron the multi-award-winning Caroline Bird (14/11/25), Samatar Elmi (Winner of the Poetry Society's Geoffrey Dearmer Prize: 8/11/25), and Malika Booker, (Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature: 28/11/25). We’ll also be showcasing local Kent and Medway poets, and providing opportunities for open mic-ers to shine – at Big Trouble and Kent Poetry Night takeovers on 10 and 25 November.

Novelists featured in the programme included Polari Prize winner Jon Ransom (‘The Whale Tattoo’: 6/11/25); Abi Daré, New York Times Bestselling author of ‘The Girl With The Louding Voice’ and ‘And So I Roar’ (15/11/25), and creator of the popular sci-fi police procedural series ‘The Rivers of London’, Ben Aaronovitch (22/11/25).

On 15 November, punk/goth legend Budgie (drummer Siouxsie & The Banshees, The Creatures) will be talking about his recent best-selling memoir The Absence, then punk poet/musician Attila The Stockbroker will be bringing his show to Sun Pier House, Chatham on the evening of 21 November.

We are delighted to present a talk from acclaimed illustrator, graphic novelist, and all-round polymath Dave McKean on 22 November. He will be talking about his 4 decades of work, alongside Guardian cartoonist, the creator of the popular ‘Fluffy’ cartoon, Simone Lia, at Chatham Library.

We’ll also be running workshops, an Author Fair and lots of opportunities for writers and readers to mingle with each other and find their crowd throughout the month with a packed schedule of 26 events!

There’s a bonus Halloween evening of candlelit scary stories on 31 October from Kent-based writers, Zahra Barri, Sam Hall and Neil M Thorne. 

Book tickets on the website