Sissay, Shafak and Bernstein to headline events at newly renamed Book Week festival

Lemn Sissay, Sarah Bernstein, Elif Shafak and Sheila Heti will be among the speakers at the newly named Book Week festival, previously known as Jewish Book Week.

Held from 2nd to 10th March at Kings Place, London, and online, the festival features a line-up of speakers including David Baddiel, Pinchas Goldschmidt, Nicholas Hytner, Simon Schama and more. It is one of the longest-running literary festivals in London, founded in 1952 and now in its 73rd year.

The festival comes as the "organisational identity" is being changed to Jewish Literary Foundation, with the aim to "better reflect the breadth of its activities". These activities include the Genesis Emerging Writers Programme, education and awards.

Book Week will open on the evening of Saturday 2nd March with a discussion of "what it means to be Jewish in Britain today" with Howard Jacobson, Emma Barnett, Sally Berkovic and Hugo Rifkind. The festival will feature 70 in-person and 16 online-only events, with subjects ranging from cricket, depression and horror films, to translation, the Talmud and Lauren Bacall.

Book Week director Claudia Rubenstein said: “We can’t wait to be joined by audiences in London and online around the world for talks, conversations, performances, debates and workshops with exciting speakers drawn from many worlds. And we look forward to broadening our range of year-round activities and spreading the word under our new banner of Jewish Literary Foundation."