As reported over the last few days (here & here), The Friday Project, prototypical web-to-print publishers, champions of the bloggosphere and under the directorship of Scott Pack, faces an uncertain future and what looks like certain takeover.
We like finding ourselves on the frontline, and this should make an already intriguing night of discussion even more spicy when Scott appears at LWF’s closing event to discuss Book Futures on Thursday. Get your ringside seats.
And, of course, don’t forget John Lenehan, Chris Meade, Martyn Daniels & Shirley Dent will also be appearing.
Online over at the showcasefringe.tv videofactory - they’ve been busy splicing the tape through the night, and have a highlights tape hot from Josie Long’s appearance at Barden’s on 23rd February: featuring Josie, Jimmy The Homeless, Luke Roberts, Michael Williams, and their public.
ShowcaseFringe.tv were at our launch party at The Gramaphone. Check out their excellent video below, featuring Festival organisers Marie McPartlin and Tom Chivers, poet James Wilkes, comedy storytelling from Sarah Bennetto and James Dowdeswell, live Scrabble, and words of wisdom from Gary McKeone.
So last night saw the official launch of the first ever London Word Festival. There was poetry, there was comedy, there were endless games of Scrabble - a fitting way to get the festival 2008 up and running.
Watch this space for outcome of our Wall of Neology art project. We invited guests to be their own Shakespeare by inventing a new word, scribbling down the meaning and sticking it to wall of the venue. The cards will form a collection of neologisms to be displayed alongside the Permanent Tourist exhibition at Gramaphone for the duration of the festival. Feel free to send us any of your own for inclusion in the piece!
And don’t forget our first ‘event proper’ is tomorrow night, kicking off with The School for Gifted Children hosted by Robin Ince at Barden’s Boudoir.
Well knock me down with a feather! Just when we thought we couldn’t possibly squeeze another performer onto the stage for Robin Ince’s School for Gifted Children this Friday, we are most pleased to announce the addition of comedian, actor and author, Alexei Sayle. Alexi will be joining an already jam-packed bill including Ben Moor, Martin White and the wonderful Darren Hayman.
In a recent flurry of press about the Festival (including a nice piece in The London Paper), the stand-out article is Richard Morrison’s ‘Street Speak’ in today’s Times. Richard has previously been a supporter of Generation Txt and knows what he’s talking about.
He describes London Word Festival as ‘a bracing alternative’ to the traditional literary festival, and says:
‘London has always been a magnet for larger-than-life literary luminaries. I could easily imagine Dickens, Addison or Dr Johnson doing a brilliant “set” at the London Word Festival.’
The Arts Council do great things to support literature in this country. It’s a long way from the cliche of the faceless bureaucrat (and the recent bad press only tells half the story) - their people are passionate, knowledgeable and approachable. We’ve just received the brilliant news that they will be supporting the London Word Festival with a small but crucial grant.
We usually shy away from those endless list programmes you see on telly, but when The Times asked us to compile a list of Top Ten Literary Stars of 2008, we couldn’t say no!
To find out who we’re tipping for greatness, check out the full list here.
