About Us

Welcome to Brighton Book Festival! We’re a grassroots festival with equity at our heart. 

We are a community where writers from underrepresented backgrounds are the main event, and diverse audiences can see themselves reflected. A space that gathers together authors, poets, illustrators, musicians and other creatives from the UK and around the world for a book festival like no other.

This year we will deliver a series of 17 fantastic events across Brighton and 4 global online events all happening during the UK’s Independent Bookshop Week.

The History of the Festival 

In 2021 Brighton Book Festival was imagined by Carolynn Bain (Afrori Books) and Ruth Wainwright (The Feminist Bookshop) as a collection of events that takes marginalised authors from sideshows to centre stage - Making Marginalised Mainstream

Now in its fourth year, led by directors Carolynn Bain, Althea Wolfe and John Mayford, with Brighton’s own Dorothy Koomson as our ambassador, Brighton Book Festival has only grown in size and ambition.

Brighton Book Festival has proven to be a diverse and inclusive space, where  people of all ages and backgrounds come together to celebrate humanity. As Dorothy our ambassador says:

“It was after all created for the human you are”