Durham Book Festival sets date for 2013
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The dates of the main festival for your diary this year are 12-20 October, and as usual we’ll be welcoming authors and speakers to Durham on a range of topics from history and wildlife to politics and science, as well as best-selling novelists talking about their new books and new writers presenting their debuts.
Durham Book Festival 2013 programme launch
Durham Castle: Wednesday 7 August, 6.30pm-9pm
We’ll be releasing the full programme on the website on Thursday 8 August, but this year, for the first time ever, we’re able to make a very limited number of tickets for the Durham Book Festival launch available to the public. The launch will take place on 7 August at Durham Castle.
This year’s festival will include our usual line-up of world-class authors, poets and thinkers, as well as a host of exciting new commissions. Guests at the launch party will be the very first people to discover both what the 2013 programme will contain and to hear the announcement of the shortlist for the inaugural Gordon Burn Prize.
Following drinks and canapés in the Castle courtyard, we invite you to join us in the Great Hall for an introduction to what’s in store for audiences at this year’s festival, including commissions from poets Stevie Ronnie and Linda France, who will present some of their new work, inspired by their trips to Australia and the Arctic respectively.
We will also be introducing our writer in residence for The Ashes, who we are hosting in partnership with Durham County Cricket Club to mark the occasion of this legendary sporting event being held in Durham for the first time.
We are delighted to welcome award-winning author David Peace, to launch his much-anticipated new novel, Red or Dead, a revolutionary novel about a revolutionary man, Bill Shankly, perhaps the first great football manager of the modern age. David’s other novels include the Red Riding Quartet, The Damned Utd and Tokyo Year Zero. Although born and raised in Yorkshire, David will travel to Durham from his home in Tokyo, making this event an extra-special one. Public tickets are very limited and are just £20. You can get your tickets at http://dbf13launchpublic.eventbrite.co.uk/#.