Festival News

Saskatchewan Festival of Words is currently taking place in Moose Jaw, 16-19 July, celebrating its 30^th year with more than 50 events and speakers including acclaimed Canadian author Yann Martel and novelist Michael Crummey.

The National Book Festival in Washington, DC, has announced the lineup for the 22 August event. Headliners include Cynthia Erivo, Ann Patchett, Martin Scorsese, Tayari Jones, Kate McKinnon, and Tia Williams. The theme for this year’s book festival is “America 250: It’s Your Story”.

Chiswick Book Festival has announced its programme for 9-14 September. It includes Kate Mosse, Sir Anthony Seldon, Fergal Keane, Adele Parks, Louise Doughty, Tony Parsons, Nick Clegg, Robert Hardman, Sarah Vine, Jacqueline Wilson, Ben Macintyre and Charles Cumming.

London’s Queen’s Park Book Festival (QPBF) will end after this year’s event, 5-6 September, marking its ninth year. Festival Director Thomas du Plessis said: “We are immensely proud of what we have achieved and to have built such a brilliant and supportive local literary community. After nine wonderful years, we have decided to end on a high… we look forward to celebrating the written word in Queen’s Park, one last time.” The line-up includes master storyteller Philip Pullman with the epic conclusion to Lyra Silvertongue’s story, The Rose Field: The Book of Dust Volume Three, and highly decorated author Sebastian Barr. Family fun features bestselling children’s author, Jacqueline Wilson; award-winning author and illustrator Rob Biddulph; and Curtis Jobling, creator of the action-packed Vampire Empire: Red Tide series.

Henley Literary Festival celebrated a major milestone on Monday evening as it launched its 20th anniversary programme at The Relais Hotel. Founded in 2007 by former journalist Sue Ryan and her daughter Harriet Reed, the festival has grown from a modest three-day event featuring around 40 talks to one of the UK’s leading literary festivals, now presenting more than 125 events over ten days each autumn.  The Festival will run between 2 and 11 October 2026.

Tickets are now on sale for the Liverpool Literary Festival, which will be held from 16 to 18 October. Guest speakers include BBC broadcaster Samira Ahmed, award-winning author Frank Cottrell-Boyce, bestselling crime writer Clare Mackintosh and Liverpool poet and performer Roger McGough. The event will be held at The University of Liverpool’s Victoria Gallery & Museum.

Industry News

The South China Morning Post has an interview with restaurateur Michelle Garnaut, founder of literary festivals in Beijing and Shanghai, on her latest festival in Nanteuil, France.   

The Association for the Study of Australian Literature has awarded its gold medal for an outstanding literary work to Elegy, Southwest by Madeleine Watts. The Magarey Medal for biography was awarded to Elizabeth Harrower: The Woman in the Watch Tower by Susan Wyndham.

At the International Publishers Association Congress in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, this week, much has been made of the pros and cons of AI becoming more integrated into publishing, Publishers Weekly writes. One panel addressed the future of translation in the age of AI, while another explored potential applications for the technology including enhanced product metadata and search and rapid content discoverability. At a session about building national reading infrastructure, Adibah Omar, the CEO of Perbadanan Kota Buku, a government-linked publishing organization in Malaysia, offered that, “For us, technology is not the destination. Nor is it about publishing more books. The point is about creating readers”.

Hundreds of employees at Hachette Book Group voted yesterday to unionise, the New York Times reports. Their union will be the largest in American trade publishing,

Egyptian publisher Yehia Fekry has been awarded the International Publishers Association’s 2026 Prix Voltaire, Publishers Weekly reports. The CHF 10,000 (approximately $12,500) prize honors publishers who exhibit “exceptional courage in upholding the freedom to publish.”

Fern Press, an imprint of the Vintage division of Penguin Random House, has closed to new publishing, the Booksellerreports. Authors on Fern Press’s list include fiction writers Katie Kitamura and Emmanuel Carrère and nonfiction authors such as Maggie Nelson and Omer Bartov. “The imprint has closed due to a resignation and there will be no imposed staffing changes or books cancelled,” Maia Snow writes.

Austrian cultural figures have launched a campaign to buy a villa once home to the writer Stefan Zweig after its owner, the automotive magnate Wolfgang Porsche, unexpectedly put it on the market following a row over his plans to build a private tunnel for his car collection.

Patrice Lawrence has been named the new UK Waterstones children’s laureate and is planning to use her appointment to highlight how reading helps communities “connect and cohere” in “times of fragmentation”. Lawrence, known for her YA novels including Orangeboy and Needle, succeeds Frank Cottrell-Boyce in the role.

Shahrnush Parsipur, the celebrated Iranian writer whose subversive works of feminist fiction saw her repeatedly imprisoned, has died aged 80. In 2026, her novel Women Without Men, translated from Persian to English by Faridoun Farrokh, was published in the UK for the first time and was longlisted for the International Booker prize.

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