IWLF 2023

We hope you enjoyed the Isle of Wight Literary Festival 2023. We were pleased to include the LitFeast in this year’s Festival. It was a huge success – from the wine tasting with Helen McGinn on Thursday to the cookery demonstration with the irrepressible Rosemary Shrager on Saturday. We hope it will be a permanent addition to the Festival.

You may have noticed another new event, our crime panel. Comprised of Wendy Joseph KC, retired judge, Ellie Griffiths, a crime fiction writer and Jackie Malton, who was the inspiration for Lynda La Plante’s Jane Tennison, the panel was ably chaired by Angela Buckley, crime historian and author.

We extended the Festival into the evening with music related events on Friday and Saturday ending with Sunday’s grand finale, featuring Dame Maureen Lipman, poet Jeremy Robson and jazz singer Norma Winstone accompanied by famous jazz musicians Art Themen, Dave Green and David Gordon.

All these events were in addition to our programme of incredible speakers, who educated, informed and entertained us.

Isle of Wight Book Awards 2023

Congratulations to StoneCrabs, the winner of the Isle of Wight Book of the Year and Best Non-Fiction Book.

We’re pleased to be associated with the Isle of Wight Book Awards, which is in its second year. There are three categories with the awards’ founder Hunter Davies once again judging the non-fiction books; Alan Titchmarsh, the Festival’s Vice Patron, resuming his role overseeing the children’s books; and this year they are joined by fiction judge Georgina Moore, who is a publicist for some of the biggest names in literature and whose debut novel, The Garnett Girls, is based on the island. Georgina is one of the speakers at this year’s Festival.

Steve Ancsell and the award-winning team AirwavesTV that produces Cowes Week provided coverage for the 2022 Festival.   Steve and team, who have produced our two digital festivals, carried out interviews with speakers and others involved in the festival set up and recorded several speakers.

You can watch interviews  and digital sessions from previous years on the Isle of Wight Literary Festival You Tube channel.