Lancaster Literature Festival: Litfest 2025

How would you describe your world?  Your stories, your family, your community?  How would you talk about the things which are important to you?  Lancaster’s annual literature festival is back with the theme The World Into Words.  A huge and hugely varied programme exploring how our heritage and our environment can be brought into focus via powerful words and stories.

This year, thanks to a Crowdfunder, which was strongly supported by audiences and by Lancashire County Council, this event is brought to you for free , with a three-day children’s festival as part of Litfest 2025.  This will feature lots of activities, workshops and writer events for children and teenagers, including Big Read author Phil Earle with his gripping Blitz story When the Sky Falls, and reader in residence, Katherine Woodfine who will also present a brand-new Sinclair’s Mystery, Secrets on the Shore.

Children can enter the Elizabeth Burns Memorial Poetry Competition with the chance to win some terrific prizes for the best poems, and Blackpool’s poet of the north, Nathan Parker, joins in with an inspirational event and workshop exploring mental health, identity and peer pressure in today’s teenage world.  Another great event for teenagers is the Mixtape Project, a workshop featuring spoken word artist, rapper and musician Testament and video artist Laura Spark, in partnership with theatre company Imitating the Dog and based on their show at The Dukes, All Blood Runs Red.

For International Women’s Day (8 March), Litfest has commissioned a revealing talk by Eleanor Levin about the incredible Historical Women of Lancaster.  Two walks will complement Eleanor’s talk, as she tracks the lives of these remarkable women, through Lancaster landmarks.  Leading historian Helen Castor joins in to give the 2025 Lancaster History Lecture, exploring the struggle between Richard II and his cousin Henry Bolingbroke in a gripping story of power and legitimacy and the dynamics of two very different rulers.

Opportunities to get involved this year include the Litfest Digital Poetry Map, looking for poems on the theme of The World into Words, inviting you to imagine the world through a different lens and bring your imagination to bear as you show how language and the world intersect.

The festival also offers nature writing, philosophy, storytelling, fiction, including local ‘master of menace’ Andrew Michael Hurley, and of course, the hugely popular Poetry Day with poet in residence Malika Booker.  You can also delve into the legacies of the Lancashire Cotton Famine of 1861–65, which inspired surprising and hard-hitting working-class poetry, only recently discovered and collected. 

Following the events of the main festival in March, Litfest is offering exciting events in April and May too.  In a joint event with Lancaster Arts, acclaimed Palestinian writer Raja Shehadeh, will talk about his life and work in Walking Palestine.  A.C. Grayling discusses his latest book, Discriminations: Making Peace in the Culture Wars.  Lastly, Litfest is delighted to welcome environmental campaigner Bella Lack to present the 2025 Lancaster Environment Lecture. In her talk Bella will show how the futures of young people, especially, hang in the balance as they face the harsh realities of the environmental crisis.  Booking in advance is strongly recommended for what is sure to be an important and illuminating event.  Litfest will again offer a flexible hybrid format (events available to attend in-person or view online).