About Us

Brighton Book Festival is a grassroots festival with equity at our heart. We are a community where writers from under-represented backgrounds are the main event, and this means our diverse audience can see themselves reflected. 

The festival fosters a space where authors, poets, musicians and other creatives from not only the U.K. but around the world can connect with a Book Festival like no other. Each year we deliver a range of fantastic events across Brighton and online with access globally. This all happens during the U.K.'s Independent Bookshop Week, 17th of June to the 21st of June 2026. This year, we will also be embracing the National Year of Reading 2026's motto #GOALLIN on reading. 

Brighton Book Festival was imagined in 2021 by Carolynn Bain, founder of Afrori Book's, and Ruth Wainwright, founder of The Feminist Bookshop, as a collection of events that puts marginalised authors onto the centre stage - 'Making Marginalised Mainstream'. Now led by directors Carolynn Bain and Althea Wolfe, with Brighton's very own bestselling author Dorothy Koomson as our ambassador, Brighton Book Festival is going to be celebrating its 5th running year in June 2026. We are proud to have hosted over 2,500 attendees and 200 authors, with many more to come.

We are a diverse and inclusive space, where people of all ages and backgrounds come together to celebrate humanity. As Dorothy Koomson, our ambassador, says,

"It was, after all, created for the human you are".