Upcoming events

Top foodies from around the world shared their secrets with Kent-based 12-year-old aspiring chef Alfred Moisan, collected together in his book In Conversation With... Wisdom From the World's Greatest Chefs, and which in its first week of publication outsold Mary Berry, Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay! Alfred talks about his project and all things foodie with Stephen Harris from the Michelin-starred The Sportsman in Whitstable; and Faversham-based Jane Beedle (Great British Bake Off finalist in 2016) and Henry Jeffreys (The Cocktail Dictionary). With host Marnie Summerfield Smith.

A donation from ticket sales for this event will be given to FineFare, the UK's largest charity fighting hunger and tackling food waste.

Andy Miller talks to AK Blakemore about her gripping debut novel The Manningtree Witches, which takes the reader into the midst of the Puritan regime and harrowing witch trials of seventeenth-century England. A brilliant work of historical fiction, it won the £10,000 Desmond Elliott Prize in 2021, and was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award.

First published in 1914, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is Robert Tressell's witty masterpiece about class war, said by George Orwell to be 'a book everyone should read'. It has been turned into a graphic novel by author and illustrator team Sophie and Scarlett Rickard, two sisters with connections to the creative scene in Folkestone. They talk to author, scriptwriter and political activist Julie Wassmer about their amazing best-selling project.

Artist Tom de Freston has long had an obsession with Gericault's painting, and the troubling story behind its creation, a 19th-century tragedy in which 150 people were drowned on a raft lost in a stormy sea. In Wreck – a work that combines personal memoir with art history – he combines the story of the raft with his own experience of making an artwork with Ali, a Syrian writer blinded by a bombing, in the process asking questions about how we might translate violence, fear and trauma into art. He is in conversation with Andy Miller.

Broadcaster Dominic King talks to Julie Wassmer about how her Whitstable Pearl mystery novels became a television drama – and the process of going from page to screen. 

Julie is the author of eight crime novels, with Murder at Mount Ephraim coming out in 2022. She has worked on several TV series, including ITV’s London’s Burning and the popular BBC soap Eastenders, which she wrote for almost 20 years. 

Playing on the double meaning of cruising – sailing on the water and searching for sexual encounters – this workshop will introduce you to the possibilities of 'nature writing' as cruising and invite you to inhabit the environments you live in through this practice. Based on the idea of a journey without a goal or destination, you will be asked to follow your desire and cruise the non-human aspects of Faversham's creek, including weather, landscape, architecture, animals and plants (and the human, if you so desire).

Open to all levels, genres and inclinations.

Run by Declan Wiffen, lecturer in critical theory and contemporary literature at University of Kent.

Voice is the most important element of any memoir. You need it to link your stories, to engage your audience and to make your memoir feel like you. But how do you do that? In this workshop, Marnie Summerfield Smith, founder of yourmemoir.co.uk, will help you discover your voice so you can lace your memoir with authenticity and emotion. This workshop is suitable for beginners and those already writing.

Journalist Tim Marshall examines ten regions that are set to shape global politics and power – if you want to understand what’s happening in the world, look at a map. His previous global bestseller Prisoners of Geography showed how every nation’s choices are limited by mountains, rivers, seas and concrete. Since then, the geography hasn’t changed, but the world has. Find out why the earth’s atmosphere is the world’s next battleground; why the fight for the Pacific is just beginning; and why Europe’s next refugee crisis is critical, and closer than we think. Chaired by former BBC journalist Mike Sanders.

Born in war-torn Afghanistan, Waheed Arian's memoir recounts how he was smuggled to the UK at age 15 with just 100 dollars in his pocket. He found a job in a shop, but had bigger ambitions – he was accepted to read medicine at Cambridge University, Imperial College and Harvard, and went on to become a doctor in the NHS, currently in A&E on the Covid frontline. He is in conversation with Faversham-based Marg Mayne, former CEO of Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO) and former director at the British Council.

Two writers talk about experiencing sudden, life-threatening illness and how it led to their daring to live differently after their recovery. Harriet Mercer's Gargoyles interweaves personal experience with insightful cultural commentary; in The Cure for Sleep, Tanya Shadrick vows to stop sleepwalking through life, to take more risks, like the characters in the fairy tales she loved as a small girl. Host Francesca Baker.

Two exciting new debut authors to watch. Host Steven Gale talks to Peruvian-British writer Karina Lickorish Quinn and Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, a writer from Trinidad & Tobago, selected as one of the Observer's 10 Best Debut Novelists of 2022. Karina is the new face of magical realism, her haunting debut a must for fans of Isabel Allende and Kazuo Ishiguro. Ayanna writes about a mother and daughter in an old house on a hill, where the city meets the rainforest – a mythic love story set in Trinidad, in which two unforgettable outsiders are brought together by their connection with the dead.

William Shaw talks to best-selling crime fiction writer Mark Billingham about his new thriller, Rabbit Hole. Mark Billingham started his career 20 years ago as the new young voice in crime fiction. He brought a fresh, edgy and terrifying twist to the genre and Tom Thorne was every bit as quirky and different a character as his creator. The intervening two decades have seen Billingham grow from a young maverick, pushing the boundaries and challenging the assumptions of crime writing, supporting new writers and confronting his own social conscience through his work. The crime novel can (in the words of Billingham himself) ‘shine a light into some of the darker corners of society’ – and the commentary writers like him give to contemporary political and social issues has an important role to play in today’s tumultuous world.

Mark’s writing career spans 20 years and his books have sold over 6 million copies. He has had 20 Sunday Times bestsellers (every one of his titles) and has spent over 120 weeks in the top ten.

Ballet dancer. Front man in an almost famous band. Judge on The Great Pottery Throwdown. How did all that happen? As Keith says... by accident mostly. 'Sifting through half-forgotten memories, trying to pick out the golden nuggets from the stuff that is definitely dross has been a curious, and at times hilarious, sometimes sad, but definitely enlightening process. So here it is – my pottery life with some very loud music and some pretty good dancing. And a lot of throwing, fettling and firing. Oh… and a good dose of anxiety.'

Host: Marnie Summerfield Smith.

Join the bestselling author of Chocolat as she talks to Steven Gale about her latest book A Narrow Door, the final in a trio of psychological novels set in a grammar school, in which the reader is led into a dark world of emotional complexity and betrayal, and nothing is what it seems.

Joanne has written many much-loved novels, plus novellas, short stories, game scripts, the libretti for two short operas, several screenplays, a musical and three cookbooks. Also a wonderful guide for would-be writers, Ten Things about Writing. Her books are published in over 50 countries and have won many awards. She has been a judge for the Whitbread Prize, the Orange Prize, the Desmond Elliott Prize, the Betty Trask Award, the Prima Donna Prize and the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science.

Psychoanalyst Anouchka Grose is passionately concerned about the effect of climate crisis on our mental health and has written a book that tackles the growing phenomenon of eco-anxiety. It is a manifesto for action, connection and hope, showing how to harness anxiety for positive action. A member of Writers Rebel (Extinction Rebellion), she talks with Maggie Butt, a member of Poets for the Planet – a group inspired by protests around the world and who believe that the poetry community has an important role to play in calling on a range of voices, experiences and passions to respond to this crucial moment of challenge.

Free event, booking required

Time travel, magic, witches... and happy families! Join Kent authors Mark Stay and FMA Dixon as they exchange ideas, antics and themes that run through their fiction written for teens and young adults... and for all the family!

Mark Stay lives in Herne Bay and is co-presenter of the Bestseller Experiment podcast. He is the author of the Crow Folk series, Robot Overlords, Back to Reality and The End of Magic. FMA Dixon works at University of Kent, and can be found with surprising regularity in London, Paris and New York, assuming you know where to look... and when.

Free event, booking required.

Children under 12 must be accompanied by an adult at all times.

Two celebrated fiction writers who explore how our lives are shaped by the communities we're born into. In Lairies – a sensitive, brutal, brilliant read – disaffected youths in small-town Britain; in Keeping the House, inner-city estates, Turkish-Cypriot cabbage growers and drug runners. Both offer a fresh, funny take on the darker sides of British culture, community and belonging. With host Gary Budden, author and independent publisher at Influx Press.

From one of our most admired writers, Cyril & Sybil is a beautifully illustrated story of a dynamic artistic partnership between the wars. Jenny Uglow talks to Steven Gale about the story of Sybil Andews and Cyril Power, two artists who both became famous for their dynamic, modernist linocuts, set amid a world of futurists, surrealists, pioneering abstraction and the looming shadows of war.

Jenny Uglow lives in Canterbury. Her books include prize-winning biographies of Elizabeth Gaskell and William Hogarth.

Dr John Cooper Clarke shot to prominence in the 1970s as the original ‘people’s poet’ and he became one of the most prolific artists of the Punk years. His 2019 autobiography, named after his most famous poem I Wanna Be Yours (Macmillan) goes into fascinating detail about his early life in Manchester leading up to punk superstardom, drug addiction and then the massive comeback as major poet that he enjoys today. He is in conversation with Johnny Green, former road-manager of The Clash.

His 1980s poetry collection 10 Years in An Open Necked Shirt, featuring the lyrics to classic tracks from his albums and more, is one of the UKs biggest-selling poetry collections of all time. His 2018 poetry collection The Luckiest Guy Alive features 30 new poems plus favourites 'I've Fallen In Love With My Wife' and 'Get Back on Drugs you Fat F*ck'. Today he performs purely as a stand-up solo poet. His unique poetry show has been touring worldwide for over 15 years.

Best-selling novelist Patrick Gale talks to Steven Gale (no relation!) about his latest novel, Mother's Boy, based around the known facts of the boyhood and youth of the great Cornish poet, Charles Causley. A man who is among yet apart from his fellows, his life is spent hiding in plain sight. But it is equally the story of the dauntless mother who will continue to shield him long after the dangers of war are past.

Patrick Gale is author of the Emmy award-winning BBC drama, Man in an Orange Shirt and of novels including The Whole Day Through, the Richard and Judy bestsellers Notes From An Exhibition and A Perfectly Good Man, the Costa nominated A Place Called Winter and his fourth Sunday Times bestseller, Take Nothing With You.