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).
A quick note to excitedly announce the timing of the 2018 Wymondham Words festival, which will be taking place from the middle of October through to the first week of November.
Exact dates and the full programme, along with ticket details, will be available, if not during July, then certainly by the end of August! Please bear with us, but rest assured that we’ve got some great authors and events lined up this year!
(In less exciting news, we’ve also updated the Privacy policy section of our website. See the link along the top menu bar.)
The Wymondham Words Literature Festival will be taking a break in autumn 2017, but will be returning in 2018.
Festival’s Director Edward Parnell said: “Wymondham Words is going to have a break this year in order that we can keep the format refreshed, and return even more strongly in autumn 2018. The Festival is run entirely by a small team of unpaid volunteers and receives no regular funding. As well as giving us all a much-needed break, and time for some of us to work on our own writing projects, having a year off should also enable us to put in place new funding opportunities for 2018 that will allow us to continue to attract important, quality writing to South Norfolk.
“In the last few years our small festival has been graced by writers including Philip Hoare, Rose Tremain, Wendy Cope, Sarah Perry, Mark Cocker, Richard Mabey and Ronald Blythe. We’re proud of this great roster, and have exciting plans going forward. Indeed, the first of next year’s acts has already been pencilled in!
“In the meantime lovers of literature will be well served by our local community bookshop, Kett’s Books, which has an stimulating ongoing programme of author visits. Wymondham Words will also be supporting some children’s literature events in the town during the summer.”
This year’s Wymondham Words festival took place between mid-October and early November.
“Judging from the record size of our audiences and the wonderful response the various events generated it’s probably fair to say that Wymondham Words 2016 was our most successful Festival to date,” commented Festival Director Edward Parnell. “It’s difficult to single out individual events for special mention as all of them were thought-provoking, engaging, and very well-received by their audiences. We were blessed, however, with some wonderful visiting writers including Philip Hoare, who travelled up from Southampton and drew a record Festival crowd for his talk on whales and the sea. And two of our speakers have subsequently won at this year’s East Anglian Book Awards – Keiron Pim and Heidi Williamson – which we’re also delighted about.
“Working in partnership alongside various local groups is really helping the Festival start to reach new audiences. We’d like to thank the Green Dragon Inn, who generously hosted our closing Poetry Supper event, Wymondham Abbey where our children’s events took place, the Bridewell Museum, Wymondham Nature Group and Kett’s Books. And of course all of our generous donors – without whose support the Festival wouldn’t take place,” he added.
‘A History of Norfolk in 100 Objects’ at the Bridewell Museum on Tuesday evening has now sold out, so unfortunately there won’t be any tickets available on the door.
There are still a few tickets left though for Wednesday evening’s ‘Adventures in the Rock n Roll Underworld’ – a cultural trawl through the shady world of 1960s London in the company of Keiron Pim and Paul Willetts. Tickets are £7.50 in advance from Kett’s Books and The Book Hive; there should also be a few available on the door.
Wymondham Words 