The 2023 edition of the annual Birmingham Literature Festival (BLF) is back and will be taking place from 5-8 October 2023. As a leading festival in the Midlands, the festival showcases a wide variety of accomplished writers, speakers, thinkers, activists and artists from the UK and across the world.
A project of Writing West Midlands – a literature development agency – the BLF is a charity and an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation. Working with a wide range of partners and venues, BLF will be presenting live events and activities across the city, as well as in digital formats and online.
BLF 2023 promises to be another engaging edition with something for everyone, whether it be discussions with authors like Emma Dabiri on her book ‘Disobedient Bodies: Reclaim Your Unruly Beauty’ exploring modern-day beauty standards or several writing workshops and regional writers’ meet up for authors across the region.
As well as these, the festival will also be attended by British Indian authors Satish Kuma and Preti Taneja.
As a former Jain monk, Satish Kumar went on an international pilgrimage for peace in his youth, walking 8,000 miles from New Delhi to Moscow, Paris, London, and Washington. Along the way he met Bertrand Russell and Martin Luther King. The founder of Schumacher College in the UK and Editor of Resurgence magazine for 40 years, considered ‘the artistic and spiritual flagship of the Green Movement’, he is the author of many books including his autobiography, ‘No Destination’, and is joint editor of ‘Regenerative Learning’.
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As a lifelong activist in the cause of environmental sustainability, social justice, and world peace, Kumar is also the recipient of the Goi Peace Prize 2022. His event will be on October 5.
Preti Taneja’s talk on her book ‘Aftermath’ – which seeks to answer the question of how we regain trust after violence – will be taking place on October 7. ‘Aftermath’ offers words for unspeakable loss and public tragedy. In the face of despair and hopelessness, Taneja writes towards a politics of hope through a determined dream of abolition.
Taneja’s book is centred on the Fishmongers’ Hall terrorist attack in London in November 2019, when terrorism convict Usman Khan - who was released on a one-day license to visit at an event in London marking the fifth anniversary of Learning Together, the Cambridge University prison education programme he participated in – stabbed and killed two people. Taneja taught Khan creative writing in prison as part of Learning Together; Jack Merritt was her colleague.
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If you are going to be in Birmingham next month, make sure to check out some of the compelling events offered by BFL!
