The Reader's Gravity Festival returns for 2022
The Responder writer Tony Schumacher, novelists Lissa Evans and Kit de Waal and author and screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce will all take part in this year’s Gravity Festival.
The four-day literary event, organised by The Reader, takes place at Calderstones Park from September 29 to October 2.
It aims to fuse ‘great books and novels with intimate conversations about life’s ups and downs’, and along with talks from guest speakers there are also plans for poetry walks, yoga and shared reading.
The long festival weekend includes Lissa Evans and Frank Cottrell Boyce in conversation on September 30 about all-things children’s books.
September 30 also sees an appearance, via Zoom, by author Katherine May in a live event hosted on stage at Calderstones and talking about her book Wintering and her memoir The Electricity of Every Living Thing.
Liverpool author and screenwriter Tony Schumacher takes centre stage on October 1 for an ‘in conversation’ with The Reader’s young person mentor Greg Harwood-Jenkins.
And on October 2 the programme includes an appearance – live from New York – by Roosevelt Montás, author of Rescuing Socrates.
Other events over the four days include Kit de Waal talking about the difficulties and joys of growing up poor and mixed race, and her powerful belief in love and books, and a draw-along with V&A Award winning author and illustrator Jarvis, plus much more yet to be announced.
The Reader founder Jane Davis says: “I started The Reader because I'd had experiences that showed me that great literature does something very real, very practical, for people. Stories, novels, poems and great scripts of all kinds are valuable because they tell us about who we are. “If we share these reading experiences, we learn about each other as well as ourselves. Literature helps us deal with what the writer Jeanette Winterson calls ‘the normal problems of gravity’ and it does it without medicalising our difficult problems. If you think Gravity isn't for you – I urge you to come anyway, sit, have a cuppa, see what happens.”
The Gravity Festival runs from September 29 to October 2. More details HERE