Season’s Greetings from Ilkley Literature Festival

2018 has been another busy year for the Ilkley Literature Festival team, here are a few of the highlights:

• The main Festival featured over 240 events including Alan Bennett, Jacqueline Wilson, Simon Armitage and Nadiya Hussain.
• Words in the City, headlined by Linton Kwesi Johnson, moved to its new home in the centre of Leeds
• We helped 60 secondary school pupils who are new to English to create animated poetry films as part of our Paul Hamlyn Foundation funded project
• Ilkley Young Writers wrote and performed their own play, The Abnormal Poets of Christchurch
• Members of Bradford Young Writers completed their Bronze Arts Awards and received their certificates from Darren Henley, Head of Arts Council England
• Filming took place for an independent film starring Derek Jacobi inspired by the Festival

As 2018 comes to a close, we are of course sad to be saying goodbye to Rachel Feldberg after 16 years as Festival Director, but we are also looking ahead to our next chapter. Planning is underway for Words in City, taking place in Leeds in April and we will be announcing our first events of 2019 in early January.