Festival team

Festival chief executive and director: Sally Dunsmore

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

Festival president: Miles Young

Special advisor: Tony Byrne

President Emeritus: John Harris

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

Major projects director: Dr Stephen Law

Website and content editor: Derek Holmes

Festival manager: Helen Porter

Graphic design: Stafford & Stafford

Green room manager: Alison Gomm

Assistant to special advisor and box office manager: Harry Price

Director of academic programmes: Professor Jem Poster

Box office manager: Harry Price

Director of the crime fiction programme: Triona Adams

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

Strategic advisor: Professor Lucian Hudson

American promotional consultant: Gary Zarr

Digital strategy and website design: BearRamElk

Consultant chef: Paul Bloomfield

Sheldonian Theatre events manager: Ben Truesdale

Manager of festival volunteers: Katie Schutte

Advisor to the Voices of Europe programme: Boyd Tonkin

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, 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:

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.

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.

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.

It was a privilege for me to visit the festival to receive the Bodley Medal. As an incidental blessing I saw Oxford at its most mysterious and atmospheric. It was a day of piercing cold and as I walked through the twilight from the Sheldonian to Christ Church, the streets were empty and the whole city was shutting itself away. Christ Church was silent except for the footfall of unseen persons around corners and the sounds of evensong creeping from behind closed doors. For the first time I understood thoroughly the power of college ghost stories.

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

The Oxford Literary Festival has in my mind become the leading literary festival of the year. The organisation, the roster of speakers, the ambience and the sheer quality of it all is superb. May it now go from strength to strength each year stretching its ambition more and more. I believe it will.

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 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.

The Oxford Literary Festival sponsors, donors & partners

Festival media partner

Supported by the Delegation of the European Union to the UK

Festival cultural partner

Festival ideas partner

The Spanish Embassy: supporters of the programme of Spanish literature and culture

The Cervantes Institute, London

Embassy of Peru

Embassy of Chile

Embassy of the Dominican Republic

Promoting Catalan culture and language worldwide

Festival on-site and online bookseller

Wines of the Douro Valley

Where learning meets opportunity: education partners of the festival

Five-star hotel partners of The Oxford Collection

Five-star hotel partners of The Oxford Collection

Oxford International Centre for Publishing

Accountants to the festival

Prestige publishing partner. Celebrating 25 years in Europe in 2024

Partner of Oxford Literary Festival

Supporters of the programme of American literature and culture

New College founded 1379

Exeter College: college home of the festival. Founded 1314

Worcester College founded 1714

Lincoln College founded 1427

Trinity College founded 1555

Magdalen College founded 1458

Brasenose College founded in 1512

Reuben College founded in 2019

Harris Manchester College founded 1893

Founded 1884

Festival Digital Strategy & Web Design

Olive oil from Sicily

Alumni Office

Oxford University Images

Local radio partner