22 June 2007

Inaugural Literary Festival `huge success’

The first Dundee Literary Festival has been voted a huge success by audiences, authors and publishers who attended the event at the University of Dundee this week.

With `sold-out’ signs posted for around half the festival events, including audiences with Children’s Laureate Jacqueline Wilson and newly-named Carnegie of Carnegies prizewinner Philip Pullman as well as the publishing panel and creative writing session, the two-day festival could barely have enjoyed a better start.

The Children’s Laureate gave the festival her stamp of approval after her Friday morning audience with around 400 people, the majority of them schoolchildren fans. "It has been an absolute delight to be here in Dundee for the first Literary Festival, a really fantastic event for the city," said Ms Wilson after her appearance at the Bonar Hall.

"I hope this can become an annual event in Dundee. Certainly this has been a great start."

The demand for the sessions with Ms Wilson and Mr Pullman had been such that they had to be moved to bigger venues to allow more tickets to be sold.

"We have been overwhelmed by the response to the festival as a whole," said festival director Anna Day. "To be starting from scratch and seeing events sell-out in the first year we have tried this has been really fantastic."

"We have had everyone from primary schoolchildren - in their hundreds - through to pensioners joining us for the events and the audience response has been really good."

"Just as heartening for us has been the response from the writers, publishers and industry figures who have taken part in the festival and have been full of support for what we are trying here."

"Dundee has a great literary tradition and we hope that the Literary Festival can add to that."

The two-day event, over Thursday June 21st and Friday 22nd also featured readings from David Profumo, Kirsty Gunn and John Fardell. Local author Bill Duncan also made an appearance as did two of the rising stars of the literary scene, Peter Hobbs and Ben Markovits.

The publishing panel featured a group of the most important people in publishing holding a unique discussion on how to get your book printed. The panel included David Graham, Managing Director of Granta and Will Atkinson, Managing Director of Faber.

The Dundee Literary Festival was sponsored by Apex Hotels.

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Roddy Isles
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University of Dundee
Nethergate Dundee, DD1 4HN
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E-MAIL: r.isles@dundee.ac.uk