Belfast Book Festival

The Belfast Book Festival was launched in 2009 with great success. Unfortunately, due to financial constraints and internal restructuring, the Festival Lead Partner, the Linen Hall Library, has had to cancel the 2010 Festival. It is hoped, however, that the Festival will be reprised in 2011 and we anticipate an exciting programme of events for its return.

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Click here to download the Belfast Book Festival 2009 programme (pdf).

Click here to listen to podcast recordings and read reviews of events at the 2009 Belfast Book Festival.

Libraries and arts organisations across Northern Ireland, including the Linen Hall Library, CultureNorthernIreland.org, the Verbal Arts Centre and the Belfast Education and Library Board, joined forces in 2009 to create the new festival.

'By working together we can have a major impact next year and in the years to come,' Belfast Book Festival Director David Lewis commented. 'The Belfast Book Festival will reflect Belfast’s growing international reputation in the field of literature and our exuberant contemporary writing scene.'

Award winning author John Banville was one of the many writers, poets, artists and journalists who descended on Belfast last February to launch the first Belfast Book Festival.

Winner of the 2005 Booker Prize for his novel The Sea, Banville is known for his precise prose style, Nabokovian inventiveness, and for the dark humour of his narrators. Banville is the author of 19 novels, including those written under the pseudonym Benjamin Black.

His novels include Doctor Copernicus (which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1976), Kepler (which was awarded the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1981), The Newton Letter (filmed for Channel 4), Mefisto, The Book of Evidence (shortlisted for the 1989 Booker Prize and winner of the 1989 Guinness Peat Aviation Award).

The Belfast Book Festival ran from February 24 to March 1 2009, with more than 30 events at venues across the city, including the Linen Hall and Central libraries.

The festival featured readings and talks covering a wide range of literary genres, such as the likes of Barbara Best McNarry, sister to the late George Best, reading from her memoir Our George; a masterclass with poet Ciaran Carson; one of Granta's 20 best young British novelists, Toby Litt; leading business innovator Charles Leadbeater discussing his latest book, We-Think; and winner of the Rooney Prize for Literature, Claire Kilroy.

Other festival highlights included broadcaster Gerry Anderson reminiscing about his showband days with folk musician Sean Donnelly, and artist Rita Duffy revealing how books have influenced her paintings.

Speaking in advance of the 2009 Festival, David Lewis said: 'The Belfast Book Festival is for everyone who reads and enjoys books, and we are delighted with the roll call of writers and artists who are set to feature in this, our inaugural year.

'We want to destroy any stuffy stereotypes. That's why Hot Press writer Peter Murphy, former NME editor Stuart Bailie and Ulster music legend Terri Hooley will be reading rock writing at the Oh Yeah Centre. And any budding poets out there will be given a rare opportunity to attend a masterclass with Ciaran Carson, director of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry.'

Other unusual events included a schools workshop with writer and illustrator Stephen Hall, a debate on historical fiction, a Dead Poets’ Society with recordings of writers from beyond the grave and a tour of Bairds printers in Antrim.