Julia Webb will still read from ‘Grey Time’ at 12 noon on Friday 28th November at the Queen’s Head pub. However, there will not be a lunch available and tickets now cost £7.50. Buy a drink from the bar and head upstairs to the snug! Anyone with tickets for the lunch will have the additional cost refunded.
Wymondham Words 2025 is live! Readings, conversations, music, workshops and a Words Fayre: what better way to celebrate drawing together in the darker nights than a Festival of literature in the community?
Tickets available from https://www.tickettailor.com/events/wymondhamartsforum
Browse the programme below.
2pm – 3pm. Tickets £7.50
multitalented translators, Amanda Hopkinson and Nick Caistor, talk with poet and translator George Szirtes, about the art of moving books across languages.
7pm – 8.30pm Tickets £7.50
Poet and playwright James McDermott joins acclaimed novelist, poet and non-fiction writer Jean McNeil for readings from their new books and a wide-ranging discussion, taking in the experience of Covid 19, and what it means to bear witness in a climate changed world. These readings are kindly supported by
Tickets available from https://www.tickettailor.com/events/wymondhamartsforum
12 noon – 1.15pm Tickets £7.50
Grab a drink from the bar at the Queen’s Head pub, and head upstairs to the snug. Acclaimed poet Julia Webb will read from her new collection Grey Time, and the readings will be followed by an audience discussion.
The collection is part elegy, part lament, part love song. “I hadn’t finished even a first reading of Julia Webb’s Grey Time when I realised these deft, moving poems would linger with me for years to come.” (Carrie Etter)
Tickets available from https://www.tickettailor.com/events/wymondhamartsforum
7pm Tickets £10
Craftland: A Journey Through Britain’s Lost Arts & Trades by James Fox
Britain was once a craft land. For generations what we made with our hands shaped our identities, built our communities and defined our regions. Craftland chronicles the vanishing skills and traditions that used to govern every aspect of life on these shores.
James Fox is Director of Studies in History of Art at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and a multi-award-winning, BAFTA-nominated broadcaster. He is also Creative Director of the Hugo Burge Foundation, a charity dedicated to supporting the arts and crafts across Britain. He will join us to talk about his new book, Craftland.
‘Impassioned and inspiring’ SUNDAY TIMES Book of the Week
Supported by Kett’s Books (apply for tickets through their website https://kettsbooks.co.uk/)
Wymondham Library 2pm – 3.30pm (Free)
James will begin with a reading from his new collection, Father Myself. The reading will be followed by an inclusive and interactive workshop designed for writers of all abilities, incorporating a series of practical writing exercises and discussions of grief poetry, prose and essays. You will learn tools and techniques that will help you to re-see bereavement, grief and emotional loss, and you will be guided in a mindful exploration of innovative and inventive approaches to writing. This free writing workshop is kindly sponsored by Norfolk County Council.
Tickets available from https://www.tickettailor.com/events/wymondhamartsforum
#57 Collective alongside Blake Morrison and the Hosepipe Band: 7pm – 9pm Tickets £15
A joyful, energetic celebration of the power of poetry and music. In the first half, poets from the #57 Collective, Alice Willitts, Christina Thatcher, Rachel Goodman and Elvire Roberts, will read from their new collections. Together they will take us on explorations of identity, girlhood, and the future.
Blake Morrison and the Hosepipe Band
After a short interval, Blake Morrison will read poems from Shingle Street, a collection inspired by Suffolk and its eroding coastline. He will be accompanied by The Hosepipe Band whose music was specially composed to accompany the reading.
“Blake Morrison and The Hosepipe Band’s performance of Shingle Street was an absolute highlight of this year’s festival.”
Director, Essex Book Festival
Tickets available from https://www.tickettailor.com/events/wymondhamartsforum
10am – 11am CREATIVE WRITING CAROUSEL Tickets £5
An hour of light-hearted writing activities to spark your creative imagination with a range of writers who will have performed during the Festival. After the workshop, you will be able to browse the books on sale, and perhaps even stay on for readings!
Tickets available from https://www.tickettailor.com/events/wymondhamartsforum
WORDS FAYRE: BECKET’S CHAPEL 11am – 3pm Table £10
Writers, bring along your books! Readers come along to browse! This is an opportunity for writers to sell their work, and for prospective readers to hear it, and to talk with the people who wrote it. At regular intervals during the day, writers will give short readings from the work they will have on sale. Please get in touch with Elizabeth at elw0168@gmail.com to book your table, and a reading slot, if you’d like one.
CELEBRATION OF LIGHTHOUSE LITERARY JOURNAL 3pm – 4pm (Free)
How do you imagine the future? Join editors and contributors to the latest issues of ‘Lighthouse’ for readings and discussion. Poems, stories and reflections about how to reach the future we long for.
Amanda Hopkinson is both a literary translator (from Spanish, Portuguese and French) and a specialist in Latin American photography, on which she has published widely.
A former director of the British Centre for Literary Translation and a Professor of Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia, she has translated over forty works of Latin American and European literature.
Hopkinson is additionally a writer on photography. She has written or edited a number of books on Latin American and European photography and on photojournalism. A reviewer of books and exhibitions, she frequently contributes photographers’ and international authors’ obituaries to The Guardian.
Nick Caistor has translated more than 90 books of fiction from Spanish, French and Portuguese, including such well-known authors as Isabel Allende, Jose Saramago and Eduardo Mendoza.
He has twice won the Valle-Inclan prize for translation from Spanish. His latest published works are translations of WINTER WARRIORS by the French writer Olivier Norek, about the 1940 war between the Soviet Union and Finland, and LAST EVENINGS WITH TERESA by the Spanish author Juan Marsé.
George Szirtes’s twelfth book of poems, Reel (2004) won the T S Eliot Prize for which he has been twice shortlisted since. He has received various prizes for his translations including the International Booker Prize for his translations of László Krasznahorai in 2015 and the King’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2024.
Jean McNeil is Professor of Creative Writing and the author of sixteen books, including seven novels and a collection of short fiction. She has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards and has lectured and held fellowships at universities in Italy, Spain, South Africa and Australia, as well as being writer in residence in Antarctica with the British Antarctic Survey, undertaking official scientific and environmental writing residencies in the Falkland Islands, Svalbard, and aboard ship-based expeditions to Greenland and across the Atlantic Ocean. Her latest book is a fusion of nature writing and memoir, Latitudes: Encounters With a Changing Planet, published in March 2025.
James McDermott‘s plays published by Samuel French include ‘Jab’ (Finborough Theatre; Offie nominated for Best New Play 2024), ‘Time & Tide’ (Park Theatre/tour; Offie nominated for Best New Play 2020) and ‘Rubber Ring’ (Pleasance Islington/tour). Poetry books include ‘Father Myself’ (Nine Arches Press), ‘Wild Life’ (Nine Arches Pressshortlisted for the East Anglian Book Award) and ‘Manatomy’ (Burning Eye Books; longlisted for Polari’s First Book Prize). James is an Arvon writing tutor and lecturer in creative writing at the University of East Anglia.
Julia Webb
Julia Webb is a neurodivergent writer and artist. She has four poetry collections with Nine Arches Press: Bird Sisters (2016), Threat (2019) The Telling (2022) and Grey Time (2025). In 2011 she won the Poetry Society’s Stanza competition and in 2018 she won the Battered Moons Poetry competition. She has had two poems highly commended in the Forward Prize (2016, 2022). Julia has taught creative writing for organisations such as Lapidus, MIND, Norfolk County Council, and The SAW Trust, and in 2016 she was writer in residence on Norwich market. In 2024 she was commissioned by The National Centre for writing and Living wage Foundation to write a poem for Living Wage Week. She currently runs real world and email poetry courses, and mentors writers. She is on the committee of Café Writers and is steering editor for Lighthouse – a journal for new writers. Julia lives in Norwich.
Rachel Goodman and Elvire Roberts
Rachel Goodman was formerly an actor and BBC radio presenter. She moved back to her native Norfolk 30 years ago to raise a family and to write. In 2018 she gained an MA in Poetry from UEA. She has been shortlisted twice for the prestigious Bridport prize and won or been placed in many other competitions. She has been widely published in journals including Under the Radar, Aesthetica, Magma, Ink Sweat & Tears, Finished Creatures, Tears in the Fence, Dreamcatcher. Her first book, Knee to Knee, a collaboration with poet Elvire Roberts, was published in 2024 by Dialect Press.
Elvire Roberts is a Queer poet and signed language interpreter. She is widely published in journals including 14 Magazine, Dark Mountain, Finished Creatures, Magma, Reliquiae, The Rialto, Tears in the Fence, Tentacular, and anthologies The Language of Salt, Ten Poems About Getting Older and Apocalyptic Landscape. Her debut pamphlet is North by Northnorth (Five Leaves Press). Knee to Knee (Dialect Press) is a collaborative, synergetic poetry book, each poem co-written with Rachel Goodman.
Christina Thatcher
Christina Thatcher grew up between a farm and a ranch house in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. She won a Marshall Scholarship to study in the UK and now lectures at Cardiff University. Her poetry and short stories have been widely published in literary magazines, including Ambit, Poetry Wales, The North and The Poetry Review. She has published three collections with Parthian Books: More than you were (2017), How to Carry Fire (2020) and Breaking a Mare, which launched in April 2025. She lives with her gardener husband, Rich, and their cat, Miso.
Christina’s reading from Breaking a Mare will invite us into the barn and the rodeo arena, where grit, goodness and girlhood are put to the test.
Alice Willitts
Alice Willitts is a writer, editor and plantswoman from the Fens, and namechecks Nature as her forever co-author. She is the co-author of Something Light Written (Elephant Press, 2023), Think Thing: an ecopoetry practice, (Elephant Press, 2021), and author of With Love, (winner of the Live Canon collection competition, 2020) and Dear, (winner of the Magma pamphlet competition, 2019). In Nov 2021 she was the grateful recipient of a DYCP grant from Art Council England to complete her second collection, Kiss My Earth (Blue Diode) out now.
Blake Morrison
A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and former Chair of the Poetry Book Society and Vice-Chair of PEN, Blake has written fiction, poetry, journalism, literary criticism and libretti, as well as adapting plays for the stage. His best-known works are probably his two memoirs, “And When Did You Last See Your Father?” and “Things My Mother Never Told Me.” Since 2003, Blake has been Professor of Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College
The Hosepipe Band
The Hosepipe Band are a hugely popular ceilidh band who play a range of traditional music and their own compositions. They have been playing together for over 20 years
21 – 24 November 2024
Poetry, Crime, Music
Wymondham Words was set up in 2010 to create a parallel to Wymondham’s popular music festival. It looked to make use of the great resources for literature in Norfolk and East Anglia in general, with successful courses in creative writing at both the University of East Anglia (the first of its kind in the country) and the art school, now the Norwich University of the Arts. Many well-known, prize-winning and much published writers had been through either or both. In addition, there was the contact with the many well-known authors living in the region.
Among the writers appearing at the festival over the years were Ronald Blythe, Rose Tremain, Anthony Thwaite, Rebecca Stott, Richard Maybe, Elspeth Barker, Mark Cocker, Sarah Perry, and Patrick Barkham. There was music, performance, poetry, story-telling, and discussion on various subjects including crime fiction, nature, translation and biography.
Following last year’s successful relaunch of Wymondham Words, the festival this year extends its interest to crime as well as poetry and music, featuring crime writers Henry Sutton, aka Harry Brett, and Bridge Walsh; poets Matt Howard, Martin Figura, Helen Ivory, Tiffany Atkinson and Andrea Holland with music by French-chanson performers, Bonjour Tristesse; novelist Polly Crosby and poet and children’s writer Kathryn Simmonds. There is also a chance to take part in a crime writing workshop with Elspeth Latimer and Martin Ungless
With many thanks to Kett’s Books for the venue and being part of the programme
and to Councillor Carmina McConnell for generous support from the District Council Ward Grant.
An evening of readings and discussion with crime writers Henry Sutton and Bridget Walsh, chaired by Elspeth Latimer.
Visitors please arrive via the South Entrance, off Norwich Rd.
Henry Sutton
Henry Sutton is Professor of Creative Writing and Crime Fiction at UEA. He is the author of 15 novels and a collection of short stories, including My Criminal World, Kids’ Stuff, First Frost (co-written under the pseudonym James Henry), and Get Me Out Of Here. His most recent novel in English, Good Dark Night, was published by Little, Brown in 2019 (under the pseudonym Harry Brett), and is the third in The Goodwin crime family series set in Great Yarmouth. He is author of the international Hotelinspektor crime fiction trilogy (published in German by Kampa Verlag). His most recent book, Crafting Crime Fiction, is out with Manchester University Press. He is also co-editor of Cambridge University Press’ landmark Elements in Crime Narratives series, and edited a collection of essays, Domestic Noir: The New Face of 21st Century Crime Fiction (Palgrave Macmillan). He is the founder of the Noirwich Crime Writing Festival and Network. www.henrysuttonwriter.com
– ‘Henry Sutton – who writes like a dream – has pulled off what Tom Wolfe did for the greed-is-good 80s in Bonfire of the Vanities. He has written – with black, comic brilliance – about our times’ – Tony Parsons, Daily Mirror, Book of the Week
Bridget Walsh
An obsessive interest in the weirder elements of nineteenth-century life has led Bridget to write a series of crime novels set in a down-at-heel Victorian London music hall. The Tumbling Girl, her debut novel, won the UEA Little Brown Award for Crime Fiction, was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger and shortlisted for the HWA Debut Crown. It has been described as ‘delightful, dark and depraved,’ a description Bridget likes to think suits her as well as the novel. The second in the series, The Innocents, was published in April 2024. Bridget lives in the fine city of Norwich. (photo in email 14 October)
‘Triumphant . . . Walsh once again seamlessly combines vivid period detail, clever plotting, and thoughtful characterizations. This series merits a long run’
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Tickets £10
Matt Howard will read from his new collection ‘Broadlands’. This event is sponsored by ‘The Listening Room’ poetry group. Come and join us for poetry and lunch!
Matt is manager of the University of Leeds Poetry Centre. His first collection, Gall, was published by The Rialto in 2018 and was winner of the 2018 East Anglian Book Award for Poetry, shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Prize in 2019, and won Best First Collection in the inaugural Laurel Prize 2020. After eleven years working for the RSPB, Matt was Douglas Caster Fellow in Poetry at the University of Leeds from 2021-2023. His second collection, Broadlands, is published by Bloodaxe.
“The world that emerges from his marvellous poems does so like a dragonfly from its larval case – strange, fresh, intensely vulnerable. His deep-rooted knowledge of this part of the world lights up poem after poem.” (Esther Morgan.)
Tickets £10 to include light lunch
Polly grew up on the Suffolk coast, and now lives in the heart of Norfolk with her husband and son, her ancient rescue cat, Dali, and her scruffy lurcher, Nell. Polly’s debut novel, The Illustrated Child, was snapped up by HarperCollins HQ in the UK in a 48 hour pre-empt, and a few days later by HarperCollins Park Row Books in North America. The House of Fever is her fourth novel for adults.
Of The House of Fever
‘Shimmering with menace, this is a deliciously Gothic treat’ Heat
‘What a book! So intriguing, with a terrific plot and strong characters’ Prima
Kathryn Simmonds writes fiction and poetry. Her first picture book ‘Be my Sunflower’ (Walker 2024) was inspired when planting sunflower seeds with her daughter and wondering why some weren’t growing. Her second picture book ‘Trouble at the Bug Hotel’ (Walker 2025) follows the trials of a solitary bee as he tries to be accepted by his fellow hotel guests. Kathryn loves writing for children, and even though her daughters don’t read picture books anymore, that is still her favourite section of the library. She lives in Norwich with her family and has lots more picture book stories in the works.
of Be My Sunflower
‘An uplifting story about empathy, facing our fears and having the courage to blossom.’
This event is for young children, with activities. Parents welcome
Tickets £5
Martin Figura
Martin Figura’s collection and show Whistle were shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and won the 2013 Saboteur Award for Best Spoken Word Show. Shed (Gatehouse Press) and Dr Zeeman’s Catastrophe Machine (Cinnamon Press) were both published in 2016. In 2021 he was Salisbury NHS Writer in Residence; the resulting pamphlet My Name is Mercy (Fair Acre Press) won a national NHS award. A second pamphlet from Fair Acre Press Sixteen Sonnets for Care came out in October 2022. His latest collection The Remaining Men has just been published by Cinnamon Press.
‘…. sometimes very funny and always engaging. Figura is remarkably frank in what he tells his audience; but he includes us rather than making us feel we are intruding.’
London Grip – Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
Helen Ivory
Helen Ivory is a poet and visual artist who makes shadowboxes and collage. She was awarded a Cholmondeley Award by the Society of Authors in 2024. She edits the webzine Ink Sweat and Tears and teaches for the National Centre for Writing Academy. Her surrealist chapbook Maps of the Abandoned City was published by SurVision in 2019 and the poem The Square of the Clockmaker is riding the rails as one of the Poems on the Underground. She has had work translated into Polish, Ukrainian, Croatian, Spanish and Greek as part of the Versopolis European poetry platform. Her Wunderkammer: New and Selected Poems appeared from MadHat in the US last year. Constructing a Witch (October 2024) her sixth collection with Bloodaxe Books, is a PBS Winter Recommendation.
‘We are all birds made of feathers and springs, and we are all here measuring time—until it stops. Some of us, like Helen Ivory, make of it a strange, enchanting music.’
Tiffany Atkinson
Tiffany Atkinson’s latest collection Lumen (Bloodaxe 2021) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and winner of the Medicine Unboxed Creative Prize. She received the Cholmondeley Award for Poetry in 2022. She lives in Norwich and is Professor of Creative Writing (Poetry) at The University of East Anglia.
‘…delightfully innovative and thought-provoking in at times troubling, moving, intense and also exhilarating ways… Lumen is one of those collections that is infinitely re-readable, sparking new connections and revealing new delights every time.’ –Sarah James, The High Window
Andrea Holland
Andrea Holland’s poetry collection ‘Broadcasting’ won the Norfolk Commission for Poetry and her pamphlet, ‘Borrowed’ (Smith/Doorstop) was a first-stage winner in The Poetry Business contest. Individual poems appear in journals and anthologies including The Rialto, www.inksweatandtears.com Northern Gravy and The World Speaking Back: Poems for Denise Riley. She teaches creative writing at The University of East Anglia and is a freelance tutor and editor. Born in East London, she spent many years in New York, then Massachusetts and Virginia, but has long been resident in Norwich, first with her sons, now with a Romanian rescue dog.
‘…poems that are not only vividly observed but also interesting and moving’ – Vicki Feaver
Music by Bonjour Tristesse
Bonjour Tristesse are a French-chanson duo performing songs from the 1930s and beyond and made famous by realist singers like Piaf, Oswald and Montand. Singing in the original language, Antonia brings Jacques Prévert’s poems to the stage, accompanied by Helen, playing Hungarian-émigré composer Joseph Kosma’s original piano arrangements. Expect heartbreak, passion, loss and hopelessness.
Tickets £10
Want to learn about crime writing? This taster session, run by Elspeth Latimer and Martin Ungless, will provide an introduction to the different types of crime novel: how to create a character; devise a plot and inject suspense and pace; how to write a strong first chapter and ‘hook’ the reader, and where to set your novel. The session will include writing exercises, discussion, suggestions about ways to develop your writing, and tips on entering competitions and contacting agents/publishers.
Elspeth Latimer and Martin Ungless
Elspeth Latimer is an associate tutor in crime writing at UEA. She has a Creative Writing MA and a PhD on crime series, from UEA. Her book on writing detective series will be published next year by Cambridge University Press. Her fiction has been shortlisted in several competitions, including the Bath Novel award, 2023, for ‘The Lost Detective’. She lives in South Norfolk, and loves reading crime novels and helping writers develop their skills.
Martin Ungless is the author of Duck Egg Blues. He has been shortlisted three times for a Debut Dagger by the Crime Writers Association. He won an Escalator development prize from the National Centre for Writing and has won or been shortlisted in several short story competitions. He has a Crime Writing MA from UEA and really enjoys expanding the boundaries of the crime genre.
Tickets £10
Thanks to cooperation between Kett’s Books and Wymondham Arts Forum, Wymondham Words returns in October 2023.
Wymondham has been the centre of an annual festival of literature since 2010. From small beginnings it grew and some of the most outstanding writers of the region have been guests here to read, or talk or take part in conversation, including Ronald Blythe, Richard Mabey, Rose Tremain, Elspeth Barker, Rebecca Stott, Mark Cocker and many others. There was music, performance, poetry, story-telling, and discussion on various subjects including crime fiction, nature, translation and biography.
The festivals were interrupted by Covid of course, but now, with the reopening of the refurbished Becket’s Chapel, Wymondham Words, in association with Kett’s Books, is celebrating the relaunching of the festival with four days of events featuring well known writers such as Louis de Bernières and Jean McNeil, and a special celebration reading by four of the region’s outstanding prize-winning poets complete with music.
Louis de Bernières
Thursday 26 October, 19:00
Kett’s Books
Local poet and author Elizabeth Lewis Williams will be in conversation with the much-loved author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, exploring his new book, Light Over Liskeard. In this entertaining and heart-warming novel, de Bernieres pokes fun at modern mores, and makes us reconsider what is really precious in our short and precarious lives. The book follows Q, whose work as a quantum cryptographer for the government has led him to believe a crisis is imminent for civilisation, and so he begins to build his own self-sufficient haven in rural Cornwall. As life in the cities gets more complicated, Q instead flourishes.
Entry is free; booking advised.
Exploring Norfolk’s Deep History Coast: John A Davies and David M G Waterhouse
Friday 27 October, 19:00
Kett’s Books
Join us on a journey through time, as experts from the Norfolk Museums Service tell us about the geology, natural landscape and the creatures that have inhabited the area. Davies and Waterhouse will explore the geology and natural landscape of Norfolk’s Deep History Coast and the creatures who have lived here, and tell us about discoveries in our own county that have been internationally significant – and that tell us much about our distant ancestors.
Entry is free; booking advised.
Celebration: Poetry, Music, Open Mic
Saturday 28th October 7:30pm – 9pm
Wymondham Arts @ Becket’s Chapel
Join us to celebrate the relaunch of Wymondham Words at Becket’s Chapel. There will be a performance by three of Wymondham’s and one of Bawburgh’s much published, nationally and internationally celebrated poets, along with great music by The Marisca Trio. You yourselves are warmly invited to be part of the celebration. Why not bring on of your own poems to read on the night?
The programme will take the form of two poets followed by floor readings, then music with more floor readings and the two other poets to finish.
Tickets, cost £10, (£7.50 concessions) if booked in advance (£11 or £8.50 on the door).
George Szirtes
George Szirtes was born in Hungary, came to England as a refugee. His twelfth book of poems, Reel (2004) won the T S Eliot Prize for which he has been twice shortlisted since. His latest is Fresh Out of the Sky. (2021). His memoir The Photographer at Sixteen (2019) was awarded the James Tait Black Prize in 2020. Like Moniza Alvi, he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is also a co-winner of the International Booker translator’s prize.
Moniza Alvi
Moniza Alvi was born in Lahore in 1954 to an English mother and a Pakistani father, and grew up in Hertfordshire. Her poetry collections, include The Country At My Shoulder (OUP, 1993), Europa (Bloodaxe, 2008) and At the Time of Partition (Bloodaxe, 2013), each shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. She has recently completed a PhD at UEA on the life and poetry of Stevie Smith. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Heidi Williamson
Heidi Williamson has been RLF Fellow at the UEA, and Poet-in-Residence at the John Jarrold Printing Museum and the Science Museum in London. Her first collection Electric Shadow was a PBS Recommendation and shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize. The Print Museum won the East Anglian Book Award for Poetry. Return by Minor Road was a Poetry Society and Out-Spoken Press Book of the Year. She teaches for the National Centre for Writing, The Writing Coach, Poetry Society and Poetry School.
Elizabeth Lewis Williams
Elizabeth is a Norwich-based freelance writer and teacher. She completed an MA in Creative Writing at the UEA, after which she was awarded a scholarship to complete a PhD. Her first book, Deception Island (2021) was shortlisted for the East Anglian Book of the Year, and was developed into an immersive installation in a replica Antarctic hut. Her poetry collection Erebus was published in 2022 whilst she was Writer in Residence at the British Antarctic Survey. She is currently working on a book of creative non-fiction.
The Marisca Trio
The Marisca Trio play an eclectic mix of world music and song on piano, fiddles and occasionally the musical saw. Our repertoire includes French Waltzes, Northern Ballads, Shetland Reels, Twin Fiddle Polkas and Mexican Mariarchi tunes amongst other genres. We are always motivated by melody to play a joyous musical variety, be it a slow air or a spinning jig. We are delighted to add some musical interludes to an evening of excellent poetry.
Crossing places: writing workshop
Sunday 29th October 2.30pm – 5pm
Wymondham Arts at Becket’s Chapel
Made of things of the earth, and overlaid with experience and memory, the places we live are richly storied intersections of material and imagined worlds. How do you give place a voice? How do you situate yourself within it? Join poet Elizabeth Lewis Williams for a workshop which explores these questions. Starting with responses to the new site of Kett’s Books, you will build on a series of creative exercises to shape the first draft of a poem or piece of lyric prose.
Tickets cost £10, (£7.50 concessions) must be booked in advance.
Joint ticket for both the workshop and ‘Writing Place’ on Sunday evening £17.50 (£15 concessions) available
Writing Place
Sunday 29th October 7pm
Wymondham Arts at Becket’s Chapel
What are the crossovers between travel writing, nature writing and the literature of place? What are the challenges posed by the immediacies of climate change to the writing of place? What is the importance of this kind of writing to the world we live in today? Join writers Jean McNeil, Jos Smith and Sarah Bower for readings and wide-ranging conversation about place and writing.
Tickets, cost £10, (£7.50 concessions) if booked in advance (£11 or £8.50 on the door).
Sarah Bower is the author of four novels and a range of short fiction and non-fiction. Her work has been broadcast on BBC Radios 3 and 4, and has been translated into ten languages. Her first novel, The Needle in the Blood, won the Susan Hill Award 2007. Her fourth book, a novella entitled Lines and Shadows, was published in August 2023. Like her previous novel, Erosion (written as S. A. Hemmings) it was inspired by the East Anglian coastline. She teaches creative writing for the Open University, where she is also reading for a PhD in creative and critical writing.
Elizabeth Lewis Williams is a Norwich-based freelance writer and teacher. She completed an MA in Creative Writing at the UEA, after which she was awarded a scholarship to complete a PhD. Her first book, Deception Island (2021) was shortlisted for the East Anglian Book of the Year, and was developed into an immersive installation in a replica Antarctic hut. Her poetry collection Erebus was published in 2022 whilst she was Writer in Residence at the British Antarctic Survey. She is currently working on a book of creative non-fiction.
Jean McNeil is the author of fifteen books of different genres, including fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry. Her work has been nominated for several international awards, including the Governor-General’s Award for fiction and she has won both the Prism International prize for both short story and creative non-fiction. In 2016 Ice Diaries: an Antarctic Memoir won the Grand Prize at the Banff Mountain Film and Book festival. She also collaborates with visual artists and filmmakers, and exhibits internationally. She is Professor of Creative Writing and directs the programme of the same name at the University of East Anglia.
Jos Smith is a poet and writer whose work explores the imaginative possibilities of our relationship with landscape and place. He has written two books of poetry, Subterranea and Sun, as well as the academic book The New Nature Writing: Rethinking the Literature of Place. He was also co-editor of the volume of essays Coastal Works: Cultures of the Atlantic Edge. Associate Professor in Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia, he is actively engaged in a number of creative research projects, the most recent being Speculative Nature Writing: Feeling for the Future.
At the start of 2020 the Wymondham Words volunteer team were just starting to plan for a festival this autumn. The arrival of Covid-19 and lockdown obviously put those plans on hold, and we have now officially taken the decision to postpone this year’s festival due to continuing uncertainties and safety concerns.
Hopefully, we will be able to run the festival in the autumn 2021. In the meantime, please all stay safe and continue to enjoy and support literature.
So, it’s now November, and Wymondham Words 2018 has reached a successful conclusion. We’ve had a wonderful series of events with record attendances and great feedback from audiences and performers alike.
Thanks to everyone who’s been involved in making the Festival a success, and for everyone for coming along! Watch this space for details of our next festival, which should hopefully take place in the autumn of 2020.
There’s just a handful of tickets still available for tonight’s event with Rebecca Stott and George Szirtes at Wymondham Library (doors open 7pm, event starts 7.30). These will be on sale during the day until they’re gone at Kett’s Books, but there won’t be any tickets available on the door.
Thanks to everyone who’s attended our first two events Spies and Lies and Howzat? Two great evenings!
Our next evening event is on Friday (26 October) at 7.30pm in Wymondham Baptist Church. It’s perhaps the last chance to locally see Martin Figura’s brilliant Dr Zeeman’s Catastrophe Machine before it comes to the end of its current run. Tickets will be available on the door at £7.50, or in person today and tomorrow for £6.00 from Kett’s Books.
On Sunday we have a free event in the Baptist Church – a talk and performance about the Biblical Book of Job. It starts at 3pm and there is no need to book a ticket, just turn up on the afternoon.
Monday’s Poetry Supper at the Green Dragon is now SOLD OUT.
Tickets are still available in advance (£6.00) from Kett’s Books for Louis de Bernieres, and there should be some available on the night (Tues Oct 30, 7.30pm Baptist Church) for £7.50.
Tickets are very limited for our Literary Lunch with Mark Cocker on Thursday 1 November at 12.00pm at Number 24 Restaurant. They cost £30.00 (incl. a two-course meal and coffee) and are available only in advance up to Wednesday 31 from Kett’s Books.
Finally, there are still some tickets available for our final event, Rebecca Stott in conversation with George Szirtes, on Friday 2 November in the Library at 7.30pm. £6.00 in advance from Kett’s Books.
Hope to see you at one of our varied events. Thanks for all your support so far.
Tickets are selling well for all events, but we can confirm that there will be tickets available on the door from 7pm at Wymondham Library tonight for the Festival’s opening event ‘Spies and Lies’ featuring Cathi Unsworth and Paul Willetts. They will cost £7.50 on the door.
The Poetry Supper at the Dragon on Monday 29 Oct has now SOLD OUT.
However, advanced, reduced-price tickets (starting at £6.00) are still available for the remainder of the events.
In particular, though, for the Literary Lunch with Mark Cocker at Number 24 Restaurant on Thursday 1 November, availability is starting to become limited, so if you are thinking of attending that event it would be advisable not to leave it too long. No tickets will be available for the lunch on the day – they cost £30.00 and include a two-course meal and coffee.
Please do come along tonight to hear Cathi Unsworth and Paul Willetts as we welcome you to Wymondham Words 2018!
We’re delighted to be back this year with the eighth Wymondham Words. The Festival runs from 19 October to 2 November 2018 and promises to be a wonderful mix of writers working in a varieties of formats and genres.
Click here for the PDF (7.5 MB) of the full programme, which will be available in various locations around Wymondham and Norfolk from 1 September. From that date tickets will also go on sale from our main box office, Kett’s Books in Wymondham, and The Book Hive in Norwich (see the programme for full details).
We open with crime author Cathi Unsworth’s new novel That Old Black Magic, which deals with German wartime spies and a mysterious body in a tree. She’ll be interviewed by acclaimed non-fiction writer Paul Willetts, who is well-versed in shady characters, as his forthcoming book King Con, about a Jazz Age American swindler, testifies.
We’re delighted to welcome Rebecca Stott, who will discuss her Costa Prize-winning memoir of growing up in a fundamentalist Christian sect, In the Days of Rain. Louis de Bernières is also coming to Wymondham Words for the first time. He’ll be talking about his new novel set in 1920s Ceylon, So Much Life Left Over.
Mark Cocker, one of our finest writers on nature, whose recent book Our Place tackles the pressing environmental questions affecting the countryside, will be our guest at a literary lunch in the elegant Number 24 Restaurant.
The popular Poetry Supper returns to the Green Dragon pub, where the distinguished poet George Szirtes and fast-rising star Ramona Herdman will be joined by performers from the audience in an open-mic session.
Award-winning Martin Figura arrives with his new one-man show, Doctor Zeeman’s Catastrophe Machine, which deals with love, loss and when to let go. Or why not come along to sportswriter Grahame Lloyd’s Howzat?, a cricketing whodunnit about a controversial £26,400 ball…
We also have a free workshop for children in the Library under the excellent tutelage of Isabelle King, author of Once Upon a Time in Norfolk.
We hope you can join us at Wymondham Words 2018, as we once again celebrate literature and words in South Norfolk. Advance tickets start at a very reasonable £6.00.
Click here for the PDF of the full Wymondham Words 2018 Programme (7.5 MB).
Wymondham Words 