The Birmingham Book Festival starts 1 October with a programme of events that will cover fiction, non-fiction and poetry, as well as a series of workshops and seminars.  The festival ends on 24 October.

There’s a few big names listed in the festival diary – the ones that stand out for me are Mark Thomas, Will Self and Kate Adie.

For local interest, there’s the first public performance by Birmingham’s 13th Poet Laureate and 4th Young Poet Laureate and a talk from Catherine O’Flynn.  There’s quite possibly a lot more local involvement but, semi-literate philistine that I am, I’m not sure who to give a shout to.

Something I like very much about the festival’s website is the way they’ve split up the listings in the left-hand sidebar into different categories, throwing in a wild-card ‘Something Different‘ category too – that’s useful for someone like myself who might want to try something out but might not know what to go for.

Speaking of bookishness, the Lichfield Literature Weekend, a spin-off from the Lichfield Festival, will be held mainly at The George Hotel, Lichfield starting with a literary dinner on 26 September with two guest authors – Gaynor Arnold (whose ‘Girl in a Bue Dress’ from Tindal Street Press is Booker Prize longlisted) and Stephen Robinson.