Paul Lynch, Hisham Matar and Joseph Coelho to headline the Cambridge Literary Festival's spring edition

Paul Lynch, Hisham Matar and Naomi Alderman are among the authors speaking at the Cambridge Literary Festival’s spring edition. Held from Wednesday 17th to Sunday 21st April, the festival will feature over 50 events, including a children’s festival with Children’s Laureate Joseph Coelho.

An array of fiction events will spotlight novelists Dame Margaret Drabble, Armistead Maupin and Elif Shafak, among others. Audiences will get the opportunity to discover new novels publishing in 2024 through the "Debut Novelists" panel, which features poets Holly Pester and Andrew McMillan, as well as essayist Sinéad Gleeson, as they present their first novels. And during the "Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize Panel", writers can get advice on how to write a "prize-winning novel".

The poetry line-up this year features George the Poet and T S Eliot prize-winner Joelle Taylor, while Jackie Kay will be in conversation with Ali Smith at the end of the festival.

The Cambridge Series will return this year with four Cambridge academics, including neuroscientist Professor Camilla Nord, who discuss new perspectives on mental health, and the dean of King’s College Cambridge, professor Stephen Cherry, who will explore "the limits of forgiveness". The festival will also centre the work and lives of women, with Shafak delivering the second "Room of One’s Own Lecture", and Channel 4 News presenter Cathy Newman will be discussing some of the most acclaimed and influential women in the world.

The festival will also cover politics and current affairs with "The New Statesman Debate", which will explore whether the Labour Party is "bold enough to fix Britain". Economics expert Gillian Tett OBE will deliver the "State of the Nation Lecture" and MP Caroline Lucas will discuss her upcoming book.

The climate crisis will also be central to the festival this year, with neuroscientist Clayton Aldern presenting his research on how the warming climate is affecting our brains and bodies.

Moreover, fans of crime will get to experience a "Literary Lunch" at the University Arms hotel with crime writers Elly Griffiths and Val McDermid. In tandem with Cambridge University Library’s crime fiction exhibition, the festival will be welcoming the curator Nicola Upson and crime author Andrew Taylor for an event called "Murder by the Book".

The festival’s children’s events will feature various events, with authors and illustrators including Coelho, who will be presented with the festival’s annual "Contribution to Children’s Reading Award". 

The events will be held at the Cambridge Union Debating Chamber, The Palmerston Room, and the Old Divinity School at St John’s College. Priority booking will open at 10 a.m. on Thursday 1st February, with the general sale starting on Thursday 8th February, at the same time.