An Audience with Julia Donaldson and Lydia Monks

Thursday October 10th. 2.00pm-3.30pm 

At Heartlands High School Theatre, Station Road N22 7ST

£10 and £5 Tickets now available.

Join the nation’s best-loved and best-selling picture book duo for an unforgettable hour of stories, singing, drawing and tremendous fun. Julia’s live shows, featuring her husband Malcolm on guitar, are the stuff of legend and Lydia brings an exciting dimension to this event as she draws scenes from the books (and maybe the odd audience member too) before your very eyes!

Together they will revisit their classic, WHAT THE LADYBIRD HEARD, their recent hit, THE SINGING MERMAID, and introduce their brand new book for autumn, SUGARLUMP AND THE UNICORN.

Julia Donaldson is the UK's most successful picture book author and was the Children’s Laureate 2011–2013. Her titles include the acknowledged modern classic, THE GRUFFALO, illustrated by Axel Scheffler, and the young fiction series PRINCESS MIRROR-BELLE, illustrated by Lydia Monks. Julia's brilliant events for children at schools, libraries and literary festivals are always in demand. Julia lives in Glasgow with her husband.

Lydia Monks is one of the most original picture book artists working today. Her distinctive use of colour and collage has won her critical acclaim and several awards, including the Smarties Prize. In 2011 she was selected by Daybreak to feature in their What’s the Story? competition, illustrating the winning entry THE BEAR AND THE BEES which was published on World Book Day 2012. Lydia lives in Sheffield with her two daughters.

Tickets cost £10 HERE (Ticket price includes a copy of What the Ladybird Heard or The Singing Mermaid).

Or £5 HERE (Entrance to the show only).

A great selection of Julia and Lydia's books will also be on sale at the Theatre on the day.

Jim Bob and Howard Male discuss rock stars in fiction

Saturday October 12th. 2.30pm at The Karamel Club
++please note change of venue (and time).++

£3. Buy Tickets HERE

Jim Bob knows a thing or two about music. One half of Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine, the band had 12 top 40 singles, 4 top ten albums (including a number one) and Jim Bob played over 800 gigs all over the world as lead singer of the band.
He's produced nine albums and continues to tour as a solo artist. A recent Carter reunion saw the band sell out Brixton and Birmingham Academy, playing to over 8,000 fans over two night. 
Not only that, but Jim Bob has written two novels. The first, "Storage Stories" described as a darkly comic rollercoaster ride full of thrills, spills and warm sick on the back of the neck. A fictional autobiographical novel and collection of short stories told in words and pictures that, if nothing else, finally solves the mystery of what happened to all the missing boybands. 
His second novel "Driving Jarvis Ham" describes the unconventional friendship of a relentless fame seeker (Jarvis) and his long suffering friend, who somehow manages to put up with his irritating, unbearable behaviour (highly recommended).

 Howard Male was born in Cambridge,just in time to have glam rock change his life. He’s been a painter, a musician and in more recent years a music and arts critic for UK publications The Independent on Sunday, The Arts Desk, Songlines and the now sadly defunct The Word . He lives in deepest South London with his wife Marcia and their cat Karnak. 
He's recently published his first novel, Etc Etc Amen . He describes it as "either an airport novel with ideas above its station or a literary novel that's perhaps having a bit too much fun for its own good." It's a murder mystery of sorts, and centres around Zachary Bekele, a glam rock star, whose ideas for a new religion are taken on and quickly turn into a cult called KUUism. Based over two time periods, one at the height of his Glam Rock fame and the other, many years after his death, it's a cleverly constructed, very funny, thought provoking novel. I loved it. 

Jim Bob and Howard will be discussing music, fiction, nostalgia and probably a lot more besides. We might even persuade Jim Bob to bring his guitar too. 

Goodnight Jim Bob; on the road with Carter USM, Jim Bob's autobiography will also be available to purchase at the festival, along with his and Howard's novels.

Tickets cost £3 and are available here

The Gentle Author's London Album

Saturday October 12th. 5.00pm at Wood Green Library (gallery).

Another treat!

Another exclusive event!

A live presentation selected from “The Gentle Author’s London Album” – including many of the Gentle Author’s favourite pictures of London, setting the wonders of our modern metropolis against the pictorial delights of the ancient city, and celebrating the infinite variety of life in the capital.

This is London seen from an easterly direction – as the centre of gravity in the city has shifted, the Gentle Author of Spitalfields Life has amassed a wealth of extraordinary pictures of London with a special emphasis upon the East End.

Among the multiplicity of visual pleasures to be savoured, garnered from four centuries including our own, enjoy the ostentatious trade cards of Georgian London, the breathtaking lantern slides of Victorian London, the bizarre car crashes of Clerkenwell, the heroic Spitalfields nippers, the soulful dogs of old London, and a parade of last year’s snowmen.Take a walk through time with the Gentle Author as your guide – be equally amazed at what has been lost of old London and charmed by the unfamiliar marvels of London today.

Tickets are £4 and available HERE 

Book Launch of "Esoteric London"

Sunday October 13th at 7.00pm. Big Green Bookshop

Roger Dean is a professional photographer and a lover of London, its history, its traditions, its folklore and its photographic possibilities. For over three years he has been running the wonderful blog EsotericLondon which marries his photographic images of present day London with texts from the past, drawing parallels, informing, entertaining and endeavouring to do so with a dash of quirky English humour. Take a couple of minutes to check it out, it's well worth it.

 Now, Roger is self-publishing his favourite posts in a pocket sized publication. No coffee table tome, but a handy size to keep with you on your commute around the capital and to hopefully act as a catalyst to encourage you to hop off the Tube or the bus one stop earlier than usual and discover your own esoteric London. As a Harringay resident and a great believer in supporting independent shops he has great pleasure in revealing the physical version of his blog at the Wood Green Literary Festival in conjunction with the Big Green Bookshop.

Here are a couple of examples of Roger's work, with suitable text, giving you an inkling as to what to expect.

From Hand-Book of London Past and Present – Peter Cunningham. Published 1850:

 "For a chop or steak and a mealy potato, there is no place like “Joe’s,” in Finch-lane, Cornhill; but the beer is bad."

From Sketches of London Life and Character – Albert Smith, Editor, c.1849:

Covent Garden Market – Charles Kenney

"The patches of struggling vegetation in square, park, or garden, whose only commerce with the sun is a sort of bowing acquaintance – a distant nod exchanged en passant through the chinks of a smoky cloud – have been wittily designated “Nature put in the pound for straying.”

But this is wit at the expense of truth. They are not Nature at all, but a vile caricature, daubed in charcoal and lampblack. The petrified trees of a coal-mine have as much claim on our sympathies. They satisfy no yearnings, but are silent and sullen as the walls that frown on them. They make no response to the inward voice that “babbles of green fields;” and, like the windows of a prison, show us a glimpse of the unencompassed world only through a black grating that reminds us of our imprisonment."

(The tree in the photograph stands in front of the Daniel Libeskind-designed extension to the London Metropolitan University on Holloway Road, built in 2004. The three dramatically intersecting blocks clad in stainless steel look as if they have been hurled into the streetscape by some giant and have then settled themselves into the North London clay. R.D.)

The book will be available, for the first time anywhere, at the Festival, and we hope you can come along to admire Roger's work. 

FREE ENTRY. 
but please email The Big Green Bookshop to confirm that you'll be attending. enquiries@biggreenbookshop.com

London's History through Crime Fiction

Sunday October 13th at 3.00pm. St Mark's Church Hall

£3. BUY TICKETS HERE

What sort of celebration would this festival be if we did not take an evening to reflect on the history of our fair capital? So a reflection we will have and in fine style no less with our Historical London Panel. Looking over the highs and lows through the genre of historical crime fiction, which has exploded since brother Cadfael solved his first murder in 1137, any budding historian or even those with a taste for a good story of their local surroundings past would be fool to miss out on quite such a plethora of knowledge and insight that our panelists have gained with tireless research that led them to their incredible books.

The panel consist of;

Chris Fowler, Chris is the multi award-winning author of thirty novels and ten short story collections, and the author of the Bryant & May mystery novels. His first bestseller was 'Roofworld'. Subsequent novels include 'Spanky', 'Disturbia', 'Psychoville' and 'Calabash'. His books have been optioned by Guillermo Del Toro ('Spanky') and Jude Law ('Psychoville'). He spent 25 years working in film.

He's written comedy and drama for BBC radio, including Radio One's first broadcast drama in 2005. He writes for the FT and the Independent on Sunday, Black Static magazine and many others. His graphic novel for DC Comics was the critically acclaimed 'Menz Insana'. His short story 'The Master Builder' became a feature film entitled 'Through The Eyes Of A Killer', starring Tippi Hedren and Marg Helgenberger. In the past year he has been nominated for 8 national book awards. He is the winner of the Edge Hill prize 2008 for 'Old Devil Moon', and the Last Laugh prize 2009 for 'The Victoria Vanishes'.

DE Meredith, the author of the historical crime series, The Hatton and Roumande Mysteries featuring the first forensic scientist, Professor Adolphus Hatton, and his trusty French morgue assistant, Albert Roumande. 
After reading English at Cambridge University she became a campaigner for the WWF, and spent ten years working for the environment movement. She has flown over the Arctic in a bi-plane, skinny dipped in Siberia, hung out with Inuit and Evenki tribes people and dodged the Russian mafia in downtown Vladivostock. Meredith later became a spokesperson for the British Red Cross, spending six years travelling through war zones and witnessing humanitarian crises. The experience strongly influenced her crime writing, with its themes of injustice and inequality.

Lloyd Shepherd, Lloyd's first book, The English Monster, came out in 2012, followed earlier this year by, The Poisoned Island. Both these novels are set in London in the early 19th century and they feature a proto-detective named Charles Horton and his magistrate John Harriott, and they both combine historical fiction with murder-mystery and a good healthy dash of the supernatural. The books have been described as 'Regency X-Files'.

The panel is chaired by, 
RN Morris, Roger is the author of a series of historical crime novels set in St Petersburg and featuring Porfiry Petrovich, the detective from Dostoevsky's great novel Crime and Punishment: A Gentle Axe (2007), A Vengeful Longing (2008), A Razor Wrapped in Silk (2010) and The Cleansing Flames. 

The authors books will be available to purchase at the event and throughout the Festival and the authors will be very happy to sign copies.

Tickets are £3 and available HERE

Publishing Today. Options, Opportunities and Obstacles.

Saturday October 12th 7.00pm at The Big Green Bookshop

We've invited some of the most forward thinking,exciting and entertaining Publishers to showcase what they do. They'll each be appearing throughout the day at one of the festival's venues, so be sure to go along. 

Those publishers are Angry Robot, Gallic Books, &other Stories, Galley Beggar Press and Guerilla Books. 

Whilst they're here, it seemed like a great opportunity to get them all together to discuss the huge changes that are occurring in the the book trade at the moment. Be it self publishing, the best way to find a publisher, what the role of publisher and author is today, this event will be most beneficial to all budding writers with any questions on how best to get ones work noticed by a publisher, what the stages of getting published are and, well, anything else you can think to ask. 

It's not often that you get the chance to pick the collective brains of such a wonderful array of publishing talent, but tonight's the night.. 

Tickets are just £3 and available HERE

Writing Workshop. How to Write About Yourself in Non-Fiction. with Ellie Levenson

Sunday October 13th 12.30pm-2.30pm Wood Green Library (Gallery).

There's a book in all of us. Or so they say.

So many of us have stories to tell about our lives. We'd love to write a book about our experiences and our dreams, but sometimes getting it down on paper is harder than it sounds. In this special one-off workshop,writer and journalist Ellie Levenson will take us through the secrets of how to write about yourself effectively and engagingly.
Ellie is the author of The Noughtie Girls Guide to Feminism and also 50 Campaigns To Shout About. A lecturer in journalism at Goldsmiths College and a former editor of the political magazine Fabian Review, she has written for The Guardian, The Independent, the Daily Express, the Times Higher Education supplement, Cosmopolitan, and other publications.

This very special two hour course will give you an insight into getting yourself on the page.

Tickets are just £3 and are available HERE

Linda Grant & Charlotte Mendelson in conversation with Alex Clark

Sunday October 13th. 5.00pm at the Big Green Bookshop.

BUY TICKETS HERE

The Festival is delighted to have two of the finest contemporary novelists, Linda Grant and Charlotte Mendelson here in conversation with journalist Alex Clark

Linda Grant. Linda was born in Liverpool, the child of Russian and Polish Jewish immigrants. She was educated at the Belvedere School (GDST), read English at the University of York, completed an M.A. in English at MacMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario and did further post-graduate studies at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, where she lived from 1977 to 1984

Her first book, Sexing the Millennium: A Political History of the Sexual Revolution was published in 1993. Her first novel, The Cast Iron Shore, soon followed and won the David Higham First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize.

Remind Me Who I am Again, an account of her mother’s decline into dementia and the role that memory plays in creating family history, published in 1998, won the MIND/Allen Lane Book of the Year award and the Age Concern Book of the Year award.

Her second novel, When I Lived in Modern Times, set in Tel Aviv in the last years of the British Mandate, won the Orange Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Jewish Quarterly Prize and the Encore Prize.

Her novel, Still Here, was longlisted for the Booker Prize and was followed by The Clothes On Their Backs, published in February 2008 which reached the Booker Prize shortlist and won the South Bank Show award. Her latest novel We Had It So Good is published by Virago.

July 2012 Linda received an honorary doctorate from the University of York. 

Charlotte Mendelson Charlotte was born in London in 1972 and grew up in Oxford.  She has written and reviewed for the Guardian, the TLS, the Independent on Sunday, the Observer and elsewhere. She lives in London.

Charlotte’s first short story, ‘Blood Sugar’, was published in New Writing 7 and twice broadcast on Radio 4.  Her first novel, Love in Idleness, published in 2001, was largely written in her lunch breaks at work. 

For Daughters of Jerusalem , her second novel, she was awarded the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award, and was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award.  Charlotte also received the London Arts New London Writers’ Award and a K. Blundell Trust Award, and was shortlisted for Le Prince Maurice Roman d’Amour Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. 

Her third novel, When We Were Bad, was published in May 2007, and was shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2008.  She was also chosen as one of Waterstone's 25 authors of the future. 

Her latest novel, Almost English has just been published to huge critical acclaim and has been longlisted for the  2013 Booker Prize.

 

Linda and Charlotte will be in conversation with Alex Clark who described Almost English recently in The Guardian "a little masterpiece of characterisation and milieu."

Alex has been a literary critic for many years, writing for publications such as The Observer, The Sunday Times,The Telegraph and The Times Literary Supplement. She has also had the unenviable position of Booker Prize judge. 

Alex has also been the Editor of Granta Magazine and currently writes for The Guardian. 

Tickets cost £3 and are available HERE

The Great London Quiz with Greg Stekelman

Sunday October 13th 8.00pm. At the Great Northern Railway Tavern

Are you fond of London? Do you like a friendly pub atmosphere? Think the 2 should be combined in some form of competitive context? Well put on your cleverest trousers and head down to the Great Northern Railway Tavern to pit your wits at the Wood Green Literary Festival’s Pub Quiz, hosted by North London’s own Greg Stekelman.

Greg is a writer, animator and columnist perhaps best known for his brilliant debut novel A Year in the Life of TheManWhoFellAsleep, and more recently for London Tales his illustrated take on the Capital.

The theme of the quiz is "London" and there'll be an eclectic mix of questions on music, history, books and...well who knows what else. 

To enter a team (maximum of 4 people per team) costs £10. Tickets available online here.

You want a prize? Well OK then. The winning team will get to take home £50. That's at least £12.50 each! There will also be a small, but beautiful, cup that the team can squabble over. 

So get those team names ready and prepare as we test if you know your Dahl from your Dickens, your Kinks from your Kajagoogoo and other equally alliterative things with slightly more in common. 

 Tickets for the Quiz (£10 a team) are available HERE

Not the Booker Prize LIVE EVENT

Saturday October 12th at 7.00pm at St Mark's Church Hall.

In 2009, the first Not The Booker Prize was launched by Sam Jordison in the Guardian. After a number of “controversial” decisions at the Man Booker Prize (and other literary prizes) this was a somewhat tongue-in-cheek attempt to introduce a slightly more democratic way of choosing a prize winning book.

This year's coveted prize

The entry criteria is very similar to the Booker Prize.

Readers are asked to nominate a book fitting this criteria and a longlist is then announced. This longlist is then whittled down to six books...the full rules can be found here, but we now have the Not the Booker Shortlist. Here it is.

Neil Gaiman - The Ocean at the End Of The Lane

Kate Atkinson - Life After Life

Lucy Cruickshanks - The Trader of Saigon

Suzie Tullett - Little White Lies and Butterflies

Zoe Venditozzi - Anywhere's Better Than Here

Meike Ziervogel - Magda

And we are delighted that FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, the Not the Booker Prize is going live! Wembley Arena was deemed too insignificant and The South Bank was turned down. Only the Wood Green Literary Festival could host such an event.

All six authors are being invited by The Guardian to attend a panel reading and discussion. We cannot guarantee all the authors will be able to make it, but...

Signed copies of ALL of the shortlisted books will be available to purchase on the night.

Not only will you get the chance to meet the authors, there will also be a Q and A and a signing.

Tickets for this event are just £5, available on Tuesday August 27^th. Spaces are very limited and this event will sell out very quickly.

To read the full story about this year’s Not the Booker Prize in the Guardian follow this link

BUY TICKETS HERE

Contemporary London Crime with Louise Millar, MH Baylis & others tbc

Sunday October 13th. 7.00pm at St Mark's Church Hall

Contemporary crime is a bold and unrelenting genre so we are most delighted to have an expert panel guide us through their stories of a nation’s murky criminal underbelly and from where exactly they derive their inspiration.

The panel consists of  Matt Baylis and Louise Millar 

Mark Billingham is sadly no longer able to attend.

Matt Baylis. Matt is a novelist, screenwriter and journalist.

A former storyliner on EastEnders, he also adapted Catrin Collier’s 1930’s-set novel Hearts of Gold for the screen that was broadcast on BBC 1 in 2003.

The author of two comic novels, Stranger than Fulham and The Last Ealing Comedy  he has been the television critic for the Daily Express since September 2005 and has also written on television and other subjects for The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, Independent on Sunday and Daily Mail.

His third novel, the fantastic A Death At the Palace is a crime thriller set in Wood Green and the surrounding area. It was published earlier this year, and is the first in the Rex Tracey series. 

Louise Millar, Louise is the author of Accidents Happen and The Playdate, psychological thrillers published by Pan Macmillan.

Before turning to fiction, she spent 20 years working in magazines and newspapers, starting as a freelance sub-editor on entertainment titles such as the NME, Kerrang!, Empire and Smash Hits, before crossing over into women’s magazines and becoming a senior commissioning editor at Marie Claire. In 2006, she left Marie Claire to start a business writing ‘ordinary people’s memoirs – appearing on BBC’s The One Show to promote it – while writing freelance features for Psychologies, the Observer, the Guardian, Stella (the Telegraph), Stylist and Marie Claire, and starting work on The Playdate.

She's currently writing her third psychological thriller, Taken Away, which will be published in 2014.

All the author's books will be available to buy at the event and also throughout the festival and they will be happy to sign copies of these for you.  

Tickets cost £3 and are available HERE

Georgian London with Lucy Inglis

Saturday October 12th, 1.30pm at Wood Green Library (Gallery) 

Lucy Inglis is a historian, writer and blogger, whose award winning blog "Georgian London" is the largest body of study on eighteenth century London freely available online. 

Her new book "Georgian London: Into the Streets" is due out in September and will be available at a discounted rate at the Festival.

Lucy's previously spoken at venues such as UCL, the Courtauld Institute, the Institute for Contemporary Arts and the Royal Naval College, Greenwich and it's a real honour to have her at his year's Festival. She's an engaging and lively speaker and considering the topic, we are in for a real treat.

Georgian London's Criminal Underbelly

In her presentation at the Festival, Lucy looks at London's special relationship with crime and her criminals. Bow Lane Magistrates Court, presided over by blind John Fielding, was a free to the public theatre of felons. Some, like footman turned highwayman (and international tennis champion) John Parry had short, glittering careers like celebrities before coming to a knotty end at Tyburn. Others, like Elizabeth Brownrigg, a midwife and sadistic childkiller, were so despised her family had to change their names after her execution. The murder of children had always had the city in uproar, not least when homeless Italian boy, Carlo Ferrari, who made a precarious living with his sideshow of white mice, was murdered by a pair of bodysnatchers who had decided to prey upon the living. The pair were caught, unlike the Ratcliff Highway Murderer of 1811. Although John Williams found guilty and buried upon his knees, impaled through the heart, it is unlikely he was the serial killers responsible for the seven murders, including the hacking to death of a three month old child in a crib, the brutality of which terrified the local population in a way that foreshadowed the coming of another East London 'ripper'.

Tickets for this are just £3 available HERE

"This Other London: Adventures in the Overlooked City" with John Rogers

Saturday October 12th  - 3.30pm

One may be excused for thinking that with things such as Google Street view and Sat-Nav that London is well and truly under the thumb of the cartographers with no more exploring to be done and nary an adventure left in this old town. Well one is about to be proven thoroughly wrong.

When John Rogers packed away his rucksack to start a family in London he didn’t stop travelling. But instead of canoeing up the Rejang River to find retired headhunters in Sarawak, he caught the ferry to Woolwich in search of the edge of the city at Crayford Marshes.

This Other London recounts that journey and many others – all on foot and epic in their own cartilage-crunching way. Clutching a samosa and a handful of out-of-date A-Zs, he heads out into the wilderness of isolated luxury apartment blocks in Brentford, the ruins of Lesnes Abbey near Thamesmead, and the ancient Lammas Lands in Leyton.

John will be talking about is adventures and hosting a Q&A at St Marks church Hall in an event that will be something not to be missed!

John's book will be available to purchase at the Festival for just £10 and he'll be happy to sign copies.

Tickets cost £3 and are available HERE

Crap Towns proudly presents "Crap London"

Saturday October 12th 5.00pm at St Mark's Church Hall

Crap Towns is back!

 The genuinely rough guide to Britain is back. Ten years after it first lifted the concrete slab in the garden of England, Crap Towns returns to dish the dirt on the latest planning disasters, urban blight and posh blighters disfiguring our nation.

'My friends and I once spent an evening in Thetford. Some people threw a cucumber at us.'

'Southampton: the only place in the UK I've ever seen someone get on a bus and nonchalantly spark up a crack pipe.'

And to celebrate, the Festival will be holding a very special "Crap London" event.

Throughout its guises, Crap Towns has celebrated some of the dullest, ugliest, most mundane, and pitiful dregs of our nation's capital, and for one night only, Crap Towns editor Sam Jordison will pick through a collection of the worst/best. 

But which parts of London made the "Crap Towns" grade? Well, come along and find out. 

The book will be available to purchase at the event and throughout the Festival and Sam will be happy to sign copies.

Tickets cost £3 and are available HERE