LIBRARY LIFE

Gladstone's Library, Hawarden

By Rhian Waller - Gladstone's Library PR and marketing

It's beginning to get a little bit Gladfest!

We're just under a month away from the biggest event on the Gladstone's Library calendar, and tickets are being snapped up for talks and masterclasses.

Our full programme for the festival weekend of September 8 and 9 is now available, and it features a host of authors working in all kinds of genres. Here, we'll introduce you to our Friday line-up. Check back next week for our Saturday speakers.

On Friday, historian Peter Moore opens up the festival with Britain and the American Dream, a talk revealing the way the United Kingdom shaped the politics of the young USA. If you have a ticket to Peter's talk you will receive a voucher for 20% off any main course on festival Friday.

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The next talk features our very own Reading Rooms Team. They will present Writing Gladstone - the Letters of an Age. The team has been working to digitally preserve thousands of letters and book pages taken from the archives at the Library. Now they are ready to share them with the wider world.

The writers among you might be interested in a masterclass with Dan Richards (author of Outpost and Climbing Days). Dan's books centre on exploration, excitement and endurance, and his class is all about Writing Adventurous Non-fiction - perfect if you are into travel or thrill-seeking.

Catherine Okoronkwo, poet and priest, joins us to deliver a talk on Poetry and Faith. As she says, 'poetry and prose are creative vehicles in which to explore a person's lived experiences. Words record, bear witness, explore injustices and provoke personal change'.

Our final Friday event is Following Writers and Rebels in the Spanish Civil War with Sarah Watling, whose most recent book is Tomorrow Perhaps the Future, which follows in the feet of those who felt called to Spain in the 1930s, to participate in a historic fight for freedom.

As always, our friendly festival involves a lot of effort on the part of our team, and it would not be what it is if not for our visiting authors and the people who support it.

If you would like to come along, visit www.gladfest.co.uk. Tickets are available from £10.

Next week, we will share our Saturday line-up. See you then!