We’re frantically dotting the ‘i’s’ and crossing the ‘t’s at EBF HQ for this year’s ESSEX BOOK FESTIVAL LAUNCH event, which is taking place at Anglia Ruskin University this Friday night. We really hope you can join us for what we know will be a fascinating and insightful evening with the legendary Guardian writer Polly Toynbee.
Due to popular demand the launch has been ‘bumped up’ to Anglia Ruskin’s 400-seater Lecture Hall. This means there will be plenty of space for everyone. Tickets will be available on the night – as with all of our events, subject to availability – but please do check the event listing on our website beforehand to ensure that hasn’t been a sudden ticket buying frenzy!
Sex Matters
For a pre-launch ‘warm up’, those living in the South of the county might like to share a story and cocktail or two with novelist Syd Moore and mythographer Seema Anand.
They will be exploding some of the myths around ‘Intimacy and Ageing’ at one of our new venues for 2023: Westcliff Drinks Co in Westcliff-on-Sea. Ticket includes a themed cocktail – definitely a first for Essex Book Festival!
Hear My Voice – The Rising Tide
As part of our young people’s Manifesto for Essex Project – Hear My Voice – which is taking place across the county, photography students at Harlow College will be launching an exhibition of their work based on the theme ‘The Rising Tide’.
The exhibition is their response to the 70th Anniversary of The Great Flood of 1953 and the Climate Emergency. Although Harlow is landlocked – something the students were quick to point out when Festival Director Ros Green mooted the theme with them, they made their work in response to the challenges that global interconnectivity creates, i.e fast fashion, fast food, pesticides, plastics, carbon emissions. Their work reflects the impact that Climate Change will have on all of us, whether we are living in Harlow or Tuvala’s sinking islands in the South Pacific.
The exhibition will be on display from 1st-29th June in Harlow Central Library. Please go if you are in the area and let us know what you think of the students’ work.
Having Fun With Miss Marple
There are still tickets available to hear #1 New York Times bestselling author of In a Dark, Dark Wood, The Woman in Cabin 10, and The Lying Game, Ruth Ware talk about her contribution to MARPLE: TWEVE NEW STORIES: a remarkable anthology of twelve brand new short stories starring Agatha Christie’s iconic sleuth Miss Marple. Ruth will be explaining the what, where, how of her delightfully thrilling new mystery Miss Marple’s Christmas.
You might want to stick around afterwards and savour of the full magic of Harwich Electric Palace Cinema’s as Buster Keaton returns to the screen in Essex as Sherlock Jr. is projected onto the cinema’s original 1912 silent film screen. As Electric Palace Manager Michael Offord remarked on our last visit to the Cinema says, nothing compares to seeing an original silent film on the custom-made screen. Some things were meant to be!
