New literary festival to launch in south-east London

A new literary festival called SE London BookFest is launching in south-east London later this year. Its aim is to host 100 authors over four weeks in autumn 2024, and to become an annual occurrence. 

The goal is to attract national and local funding to ensure free ticket availability for the majority of the events at the festival. Once all costs have been covered, any profit made by the festival will be donated to local food banks.

The festival has been set up by the team behind Peculiar Publications, who publish several newspapers in the local area—including The Peckham Peculiar.

Co-founder Mark McGinlay, who was the festival co-ordinator for the SW11 Literary Festival and has worked in the book trade for more than 30 years, said: “This month marks 10 years since we launched our very first publication and the festival shares the same aims of all our newspapers—to promote the brilliant diversity and sense of community that the area has to offer." 

He went on to add: "To ensure the festival takes place, we will need to get funding from national book publishers who are keen to promote the importance of diversity in the book world. We will also need sponsorship from businesses with connections to south-east London.

“We’re very confident we can achieve this over the coming weeks and would encourage people interested to email us as soon as possible."