Page 27 - link magazine

Welcome

to the eleventh

Swindon Festival

of Literature!

I -IS May 2004

And it's into a second literary decade we go, celebrating
and enjoying words, stories, and ideas.We have novelists and
poets, biographers and diarists, commentators and critics,
writers and speakers, on art, gardening, global warming, therapy,
law, history, religion, culture, crime, communes, sport,
neuropsychology, relationships, philosophy, and even crop circles
and prime numbers!
The Festival is an opportunity, in Swindon, to see, hear, and meet
the men and women who take pains to write, who treat
language as a precision instrument and set out to use it well.
Every kind of writing on offer, every different talk, and every
story told at the Festival is not only a way of being informed,
distracted, or entertained, but also a way to discover more that
is delightful, dangerous, or difficult about ourselves.
Self discovery, like bungee jumping or falling in love, is a risky
L9
but pleasurable and life-affirming activity!
This year's Festival begins, as ever, with fun and the rising sun, at
dawn on that high ridge overlooking the town in Lawn Woods
on May Day morning; and is followed by fifteen days of literary f
treats for every age and taste, in one long celebration of things
well written and things well said.
On most days there will be three or more events, at midday,
teatime, and in the evening, carefully spaced and placed, to
enable you to attend almost every event, should you have the
stamina! For the full at-a-glance Festival diary, see overleaf.
Pick up a full 32-page brochure at your local library or leisure
centre, or telephone 771080.
And then, mark your own diary, so that during the first fifteen
days of May you join us for Swindon's very own communion of
words: cool communication, serious stuff and comic guff, all
there to help us celebrate life and love literature, together!
Please read on, and come along.
MATT HOLLAND
Festival Organiser