The Origins of the Festival
Oakwood is a suburb in the north of Derby and is an ideal place to hold an annual literature festival…
It is large enough to provide various amenities and small enough to stroll around and run into people you might know.
Dawn Brookes Founder
Our first festival was opened in 2018 by author, Debbie Young who is Ambassador for the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi).
The original idea for the Festival arose from discussions between Dawn Brookes (founder & author) and a few like-minded friends. Discussions with Debbie Young, founder of Hawkesbury Upton Literature Festival then took place.
For the first two years the festival was held on the Hawkesbury Upton model and was free to the public. Whilst this was successful for the first year, it was not financially viable in the second.
The new model aims to still put on a great and informative festival while providing value for money.
The festival would not be able to run without the help of volunteers and we have been lucky to receive community support
The second festival was opened by then Deputy Mayor, Frank Harwood and opened with a talk around memoir publishing.
We aim to attract a large number of local enthusiasts and volunteers.
The Festival today
The festival in 2020 will be spread over two days and include poetry, a school visit, author talks, open mic sessions and a memories of VE Day Exhibition.
2020 will include a short story and poetry competition with winners invited to read from their works during the main event.
We are proud to say that we have both Indie and traditionally published authors through our doors. We like to invite up-and-coming authors to be part of our event annually. Some of these, we believe will be household names in a few years time.
We value the time given by authors attending and that of our volunteers who work hard to make everyone who enters, welcome.
