Festival for Working Class Writers calls for book club titles

The Festival for Working-Class Writers' team are on the lookout for books to promote as part of their new book club, which launches in 2022.

ClassFest Book Club aims to promote and celebrate books published in 2022 by working-class writers, with a view to them appearing at the festival in Bristol next October. It is envisaged the club will run throughout the summer.

Festival founder and artistic director Natasha Carthew (pictured) is appealing to publishers to send her books by self-identified working-class authors who are publishing next year. 

She said: "This innovative new book club is a brilliant opportunity for publishers to showcase the books they have publishing next year, and we’ll not only be looking for fiction and non-fiction, but poetry, short story collections and graphic novels – if your writer is working-class and publishing in book form in 2022, I’d love to hear from you."

The festival was recently highly commended for The Bookseller FutureBook Discover Award. The 2021 programme, sponsored by Hachette UK, Penguin Random House and funded by Arts Council England, was held as a hybrid event, and included panel discussions with both prize-winning and debut writers, masterclasses in collaboration with the Women’s Prize and Arvon Foundation, workshops, readings, discussions and book signings.