Page 31 - link magazine

Welcome to the eighth
4^tivaj Swindon Festival of Literature,

an annual adventure that takes
Swindon words from the page

to the stage!
\l^erati'^^^

1-12 May2001
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Writing is a solitary business, and so is reading. Here is a chance to celebrate . -4 f
both together in a kind of cultural communion.Well, a literary frolic at . '
least.A chance to meet the men and women who have the courage to
choose the words, tell the stories, and make the poems. Authors talk to ,r
readers.And readers talk back!
This year we have a terrific pre-Festival project, a series of warm-up
acts. Most are workshops for children and treats for teachers, but
Bernard Cornwell is an adventure for everyone.Then, as ever, on I st May,
we kick off with Festival fun and the rising sun, at dawn in Lawn Woods on
what might otherwise be an ordinary Tuesday but this year gets the full SFL
Dawn Chorus treatment: live performance, live music, live magic, live minstrels,
live dancers, live hot breakfasts, and, we hope, a live, even if only half awake, you!
There follow twelve days of earnest exploration and exciting entertainment, cool
communication and crazy competition, laudable lectures and dangerous discussion, teasing
talks and storywalks, serious stuff and comic guff.We have prize-winning novelists and poets,
philosophers, linguists, psychologists, storytellers, educationalists, impressionists, columnists, comics, sailors, and
even talking trombones! All in all, something for all, treats for every age and taste: one long celebration of things
well written and things well said.
Events have been carefully spaced and placed, to enable you to attend almost every event, should you have the
stamina! To get the full programme, telephone 530328 or 771080. Or, for the at-a-glance Festival diary,
turn over for the literary Link Magazine spread!
And then mark your own diary, so that during the first twelve days of May you join us, to discover that fine
writing and good talk instructs as it delights and leaves us feeling never quite the same again.
Read on, come along, and surprise yourself, in Swindon!
MATT HOLLAND i
Festival Director
Literature: the stories of life well told...
...but you haven't really read the book till you've seen the author!