About
Brighton Book Festival is a grassroots festival with equity at its heart.
A place where writers from underrepresented backgrounds are the main event, and where 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.
Now in its third year, led by directors Carolynn Bain, Althea Wolfe and John Mayford, the event has only grown in size and ambition. This year will see a series of 20 fantastic events across the city during the UK's Independent Bookshop Week.
Our history
Founded in 2022, the Brighton Book Festival exists because Afrori Books and The Feminist Bookshop came together to create a new book festival aimed at making the marginalised mainstream.
The teams behind the two bookshops were tired of book festivals that treated marginalised creators as a sideshow rather than the main event. So they created a space where writers, illustrators and other creatives from underrepresented backgrounds could be seen and heard in full. And where book lovers from all backgrounds could enjoy seeing their stories front and centre.
The Brighton Book Festival reaches a younger and more diverse audience than other book festivals: more than 50% of those attending in previous years said they had never been to a book festival before.