Saboteur Awards 2019 Category Spotlight: Best Literary Festival

It’s the first year that the Saboteur Awards Festival has been able to include a literary festival category, and we’re delighted by the response that this addition has received. You can vote for your favourite festival up until May 12th by heading over to the voting form, available just here.

Asian Writer Festival

The Asian Writer is the voice of British Asian writing and is for readers and writers interested in South Asian literature. The Asian Writer Festival brings together the contents of its website – interviews, masterclasses and features on literary trends – in a live format. The festival aims to support and encourage writers, by offering advice and inspiration and seeks to raise the profile of emerging voices.

For more information about the festival and their plans for the future, you can visit their website here.

Flash Fiction Festival

The Flash Fiction Festival UK is the only literary festival in the UK, and probably the world, entirely dedicated to flash (short-short) fiction. Founded in 2017 by Bath Flash Fiction Award in order to increase knowledge about flash fiction and give opportunities to beginner and experienced writers of all ages and backgrounds, it is now in its third year. It’s a small, fun and friendly weekend festival, attracting participants from all over the world with a huge array of workshops, talks and readings by well-known writers and teachers of the genre. This year, presenters are coming from the UK, Ireland, US, New Zealand, Germany, Italy and Cyprus. A Festival Anthology is produced after the event and all those attending can submit stories to it.

To find out more about the festival you can visit their official website by clicking here.

Leeds Lit Festival

The first ever Leeds Lit Fest celebrated the vibrant and thriving literature scene that exists in Leeds with local writers, performers and artists showcasing their talents alongside those from across the UK and internationally. The world renowned writer David Peace launched the festival.  There were more than 60 events which included author talks, workshops, panels, performance, digital, poetry and spoken word events. It was run on a shoestring budget but with a sheer determination and big ambition to create something special for a city that had never had a citywide literature festival.
Leeds Lit Fest took place 6 –10 March 2019 at venues across the city which included some of Leeds’ most iconic buildings and drew in partners from many of the creative organisations in the city, principally The Leeds Library, Leeds Libraries, Carriageworks Theatre, Chapel FM, The Leeds Big Bookend and Northern Short Story Festival, Headingley LitFest, Hyde Park Book Club, MILIM, Leeds Minster, Leeds Church Institute and #foundfiction. We’re looking forward to 2020!

Verve Poetry Festival

‘The best poetry festival in the UK’ – Anthony Anaxagorou

With so many brilliant festivals popping up all over the county, Verve Poetry Festival brings something a little different to the festival ouvre. We pride ourselves in celebrating the best of the entire spectrum of UK poetry, with the occasional international artist thrown in. So you will see a thoughtful poetry reading and discussion followed by a raucous and lively spoken word show – a dramatic poetry piece followed by some sound poetry. We are a city centre festival and the diverse make-up of our city is front and centre in our programming and our audiences. We are for everyone who has always loved or is just becoming interested in poetry – those who want to watch or get involved – those who want to dip in or those who want to become immersed. Our date for 2020 are Feb 20-23. Keep your eyes peeled this autumn for our next storming line-up. The latest updates will be published to our website