Looking Back To The First Bury Lit Fest

I was delighted to be asked to help organise the first Bury St Edmunds Literature Festival in 2017, which was due to my local connections, collaborative and innovative approach, and experience of organising events for QuirkHouse Theatre Company, co-founded with Jackie Carreira.

We began thinking that smaller and more manageable might be sensible, and agreed roles from the start – essential when organising things with a committee – but this soon grew into something much more ambitious, and involving more of the town.

Above: Dickens at the Angel Hotel

I especially relished organising some live events, including adapting Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers into a manic three-person version and performing it in the Angel Hotel lounge, and collaborating with Walking with the Wounded and students from West Suffolk College, to perform readings of war poetry by the memorial on Angel Hill.

With the ethos that everybody should win and a can-do attitude, the festival was a huge success, and we had lots of great feedback from authors, venues, and audiences, to help the committee to organise the next – and we agreed when meeting afterwards to debrief, that there would be one. The whole process was extremely hard work, but extremely rewarding!

As an actor, writer, singer, and book blogger, literature in its many forms is a huge part of my life, and I believe that it should be cherished and nurtured, and enjoyed, by all. I’m so pleased the BSE Lit Fest exists.

- AJ Deane; author of Sci-Fi and Fantasy poetry collection, ‘Portals’, and co-author of ‘Winter

Tails’ – animal fables from around the world.

www.ajdeane.com / www.ajpagefarer.wordpress.com