Lancaster Litfest has just announced the programme for its ten day extravaganza of literary delights, headlined this year by Jon Ronson, the author, Guardian columnist and documentary filmmaker whose book, Men Who Stare At Goats, was made into a feature film with Kevin Spacey, George Clooney and Ewan McGregor.

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Back in 1969, Audrey Steeley got a summer job at the bobbin mill in Spark Bridge, and continued to do casual work there for several school and college holidays. The impact of the experience has never left her – the one thing that made it bearable was the camaraderie of the tight-knit band of workers, and their pride in the products they produced.

It’s taken Audrey forty years to finally write something that she feels does justice to the place and the people. Read more …

This year’s National Poetry Day is Thursday 6 October and the theme is ‘Games’.

The co-ordinators say: “This year we will be working with the Winning Words team who are charged with bringing poetry into next year’s London 2012 celebrations. Together we will bring you poems, events and new resources to make the very best of poetry’s biggest day.”

First out of the blocks in Cumbria is poet Mary Robinson, who’s put together a day of readings and discussions in her local village hall in Rosley. Read more …

A new, monthly open mic gig is due to start up in Brampton, near Carlisle, next month.

Café Writers will welcome poets, writers, musicians, comedians, and storytellers – and hopefully a big, appreciative audience – to the town’s Off The Wall Café on Saturday 1 October.

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Sedbergh Book Town’s annual literature festival, The Write Idea, is out of the blocks again from 21 to 25 September.

Poetry takes centre stage this year with three events highlighting the growing interest in reading and writing poetry.

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Programme details for Beyond the Frontiers, this year’s literature festival at the Senhouse Roman Museum in Maryport in November, have been finalised and confirmed. Weekend tickets for the whole kit and kaboodle (excluding creative writing workshops) are on sale now, priced £50.00. Tickets for single events are also available.

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Tickets are now on sale for a limited number of Maryport Litfest’s headline events in November. Senhouse Roman Museum – the festival venue – is taking bookings for the opening event with Rory Stewart (pictured), who will be talking about his book The Places In Between, at 7.00pm on Friday 4 November.

On Saturday 5 November, international landscape photographer Sir Malcolm MacGregor will be talking about his photographic books on the Outer and Inner Hebrides and Wilderness Oman. Read more …

“When I came here I was mostly with the old peasants, because the younger ones had gone, and they became my teachers. It was like my university. I learned to tap a scythe, and I learned a whole constellation of sense and value about life.” – John Berger

Berger was writing about the French Pyrenees rather than the English Lake District, but Writing the Fields: The John Berger Scything Festival is a seminar and readings programme organised in his honour, mixing rural field crafts and revolutionary thinking. Read more …

Brantwood, the former home of John Ruskin on Coniston Water, is showing an exhibition of drawings and illustrations by the author of the famous series of children’s classics, Swallows and Amazons, and has organised an accompanying events programme.

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If you’re fed up with the rain, get the sun cream out and head south by south west, where Words by the Water’s sister festival, Ways With Words, runs from 8-17 July at Dartington Hall in Devon.

In many ways, it’s very similar to the early spring fling in Keswick, with a rolling programme of talks, readings and discussions from novelists, poets, philosophers, scientists, and politicians. But there is a lot that is different.
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