Festival team

Festival chief executive and director: Sally Dunsmore

Festival board directors: Jarl Severn (Chairman), Sir Ben Okri OBE, Carole Allan, Kate Farquhar-Thomson, Paul Simons, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton LVO MBE DL

Festival president: Miles Young

Special advisor: Tony Byrne

President Emeritus: John Harris

Director of children’s and young people’s programme: Ben O’Donnell

Strategic advisor: Professor Lucian Hudson

Major projects director: Dr Stephen Law

American promotional consultant: Gary Zarr

Website and content editor: Derek Holmes

Festival manager: Helen Porter

Graphic design: Stafford & Stafford

Assistant to special advisor: Sarah Burch

Director of academic programmes: Professor Jem Poster

Director of the crime fiction programme: Triona Adams

Founding director of the programme of Georgian literature and culture: Dr Maya Jaggi

PR and media: Katie Read katie@readmedia.co.uk

Digital strategy and website design: BearRamElk

Consultant chef: Paul Bloomfield

Sheldonian Theatre events manager: Ben Truesdale

Advisor to the Voices of Europe programme: Boyd Tonkin

Corporate consultants: Siren Communications Ltd

Photography: KT Bruce

Festival stewards: We also thank all the voluntary festival stewards for their time and generous support throughout the festival. If you are interested in volunteering at the festival please contact volunteers@oxfordliteraryfestival.org

Patrons: Dame Joan Bakewell, Professor John Carey, Professor Richard Dawkins, Daisy Goodwin, Joanne Harris, Peter Kemp, Mark Lawson, The Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Lord Patten of Barnes, CH, PC, Sir Peter Stothard, Professor Ian Goldin, Alex Preston, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

The Oxford Literary Festival was co-founded by Sally Dunsmore and Angie Prysor-Jones.

Festival information:

Often as an author, I only occasionally get to meet the public who buy and read my books. The Oxford Literary Festival was a special opportunity for me and certainly one of the highlights of my career – it was an honour I will never forget.

The Oxford festival is the most elegant and atmospheric of literary festivals. It’s a pleasure to both attend and perform there.

A stimulating and rewarding on-stage conversation; a lively informed and tolerant audience; privileged access to the great treasures of the Bodleian, and finally, wonderfully interesting dinner companions to help me conclude the best day I have enjoyed at any festival – anywhere.

The night in Oxford was the most beautiful event I have ever done. Not just the spectacular setting (of the Sheldonian), but an unforgettable evening.

I loved the whole atmosphere of the Oxford Literary Festival. From breakfast, alongside some of the attendees, who were talking books with each other a mile a minute, to the public event at The Sheldonian where everyone was lively and engaged – I felt I had arrived in a kind of literary heaven.

The Oxford Literary Festival is intellectual Viagra.

I came away buzzing and reassured that we still have in this century a wide ranging community fascinated not just by famous authors (I’ve rarely seen so many concentrated in one place) but by challenging ideas and questions.

Every literary festival stays in an author’s mind for slightly individual reasons. I shall remember the Oxford festival for: - the size of the audience: at the top end of the range - their intelligence – this makes a huge difference for a speaker. In the Oxford audience I encountered many experts in the field my book covered and even one of the ambassadors I’d quoted - the beauty and the grace of the place itself – incomparable - the willingness of my hearers to buy books afterwards; I’ve never sold more.

The Oxford Literary Festival sponsors, donors & partners

Delegation of the European Union to the United Kingdom

Supporter of the festival's Voices of Europe programme

Supporter of programme of science and medicine and annual science and innovation award

Festival cultural partner

Festival ideas partner

Event generously supported by the Spanish Embassy

Event generously supported by Republic of Panama

Supporter of Italian programme

Festival London hotel partner

Festival literary heritage partner

Festival on-site and online bookseller

Sponsor of the festival crime fiction programme

Patron donor for the programme of Irish literature and culture

CEO of Project People

Supporters of the programme of American literature and culture

Exeter College: college home of the festival

Worcester College

Lincoln College

St Cross College

Trinity College

Accountants to the festival

Wines of the Douro Valley

Prestige publishing partner

Partner of Jewish programme

Olive oil from Sicily

Local radio partner

Festival Digital Strategy & Web Design

Alumni Office

Oxford University Images

K T Bruce Photography