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Mary Beard, Miriam Margolyes and more to headline 10th Bradford Literature Festival
Mary Beard, Corrine Bailey Rae, Lemn Sissay, Miriam Margolyes and Shaykh Hamza Yusuf have been announced as headliners for the 10th annual Bradford Literature Festival, taking place 28th June to 7th July 2024.
Among the 500 events taking place over 10 days will also be discussions with Ruby Wax, Shaparak Khorsandi and Sara Pascoe, vicar and journalist Kate Bottley, poet Joelle Taylor and former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Other events will include Sacred Music – a celebration of devotional music from across the religious spectrum; Lyrical Mehfil – an annual event exploring lyrical poetry and a Health and Wellbeing event featuring yoga sessions. An exhibition will also commemorate 10 years of the Bradford Literature Festival.
Running in tandem with the festival will be a free education programme for children and young people consisting of live shows, performances, and interactive workshops by writers, performance poets, illustrators, scientists, historians and journalists. This year’s themes range from Ancient Egypt to Shakespeare, Gothic literature to climate change, with events on fairy tales, activism and more.
The Bradford Literature Festival will also run an all-day Creative Economic Conference (CEC) on 27th June 2024 at the University of Bradford. This year, global management consulting firm McKinsey will be presenting their “The Arts in the UK: Seeing the Big Picture” report. CEC speakers will explore how the business and creative sectors can work together to drive innovation, inspire visionary thinking and grow the economy regionally and nationally via a variety of talks and panel discussions.
Syima Aslam, founder, chief executive and artistic director of the festival, said: “From the outset, Bradford Literature Festival’s aim was to create a tangible change; to raise aspirations and literacy levels, in Europe’s youngest city, by creating an international destination literature festival that would inspire the next generation both across Yorkshire and across the UK.
“A space for nuanced conversation about issues that affect us all, Bradford Literature Festival has been called innovative and disruptive, and is now recognised as Europe’s most diverse and eclectic literature festival. We call our approach the common-sense way to engage the audiences we care about passionately.”
Tickets can be bought here.
