North Cornwall Book Festival

A literary feast for all on the beautiful North Cornish coast.

The North Cornwall Book Festival is Endelienta Arts’ literary festival, one of Cornwall’s longest-running and most established literary events. Established in 2013 by acclaimed author Patrick Gale, the festival has grown over the past 12 years into a highly regarded fixture in the UK’s cultural calendar. Since its launch, the North Cornwall Book Festival has brought together writers, readers, schools, and volunteers for a vibrant weekend of literary celebration. Its programmes have featured Booker Prize winners and nominees alongside emerging and local voices, offering audiences access to world-class talent while nurturing new writing through workshops and development opportunities.

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“I wanted the North Cornwall Book Festival to draw on the best elements I had seen for myself visiting book festivals as a novelist. My ideal was to keep it small and intimate, so that readers could come to almost every talk and not feel overwhelmed, and, crucially, to encourage authors to stay for the whole thing so that they could benefit from making new author friends and the public could enjoy bumping into them.”

Patrick Gale | North Cornwall Book Festival Founder

Festival Gallery

Since being founded in 2012, the festival has hosted a rich and varied line-up of authors, including: Maggie O’Farrell, Ann Cleeves, Kit De Waal, Natalie Haynes, George Alagiah, Kate Mosse, Michael Morpurgo, Rachel Joyce, Inua Ellams and Jackie Kay.

Here are just a few images captured across the years of the book festival.

Festival School Workshops

Each year, ahead of the festival weekend, we welcome around 300 primary and secondary school children to St Endellion for inspiring literary workshops led by writers and illustrators of children’s and YA fiction such as Martin Brown, Liz Kessler and Ross Montgomery.

Listen Here

Each festival we record the wonderful authors who take part in the festival. This is our growing sound archive where you can stream and download free podcasts from past North Cornwall Book Festival events. Handy for those of you who couldn’t make it, or who had such a great time you want to live it all over again! If you prefer, you can access any of these podcasts through iTunes, Pandora, Castbox and TuneIn.

SoundCloud