Writing

Jem Poster and Sarah Burton

Creative Writing Course: Start Strongly, Finish in Style: Writing Beginnings and Endings in Fiction
Trinity College: Garden Room Levine Building 9:30am Sat 29 Saturday, 29 March 2025 See this event
Mel Taylor-Bessent

Race to Imagination Island: Writing Masterclass
Weston Lecture Theatre 10:00am Sat 29 Saturday, 29 March 2025 See this event
Jem Poster and Sarah Burton

Creative Writing Course: Places and Spaces: Writing Location in Fiction
Trinity College: Garden Room Levine Building 9:30am Sun 30 Sunday, 30 March 2025 See this event
Jem Poster and Sarah Burton

Couldn’t Put it Down: How Writers Keep Readers Reading
Trinity College: Garden Room Levine Building 12:00pm Mon 31 Monday, 31 March 2025 See this event

Festival information:

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.