The year was 2017. The place was a small, friendly bar in Bury St Edmunds called Oakes Barn. A seemingly random bunch of book lovers had been gathered at one of the tables. They were invited because somebody had the crazy idea to create a Literature Festival and have it organised by people who had never put one together before and had no good reason to think that they could. We did it anyway.
At the time, I was eking out a meagre living as a playwright and co-founder of QuirkHouse Theatre Company. I’d also worked for ten years as a bookseller for Waterstones, so maybe I wasn’t such a random choice. As I remember, all of us were up for it that day in Oakes Barn. We had a wide range of experience between us, and nobody told us we couldn’t.
Roles were broadly allocated, ideas flooded in - more than enough for several book festivals - and we strode boldly out of the bar without any clue as to what we had just said ‘yes’ to. And that’s how it started. Within a very short space of time, we had secured our first author. Louis de Bernier, who happens to live in Suffolk, agreed with very little persuasion, and that boosted our confidence enormously. Sponsors followed and more authors, even volunteers, and then the work really began.Â
In reality, running a literature festival is a crazy thing to want to do. It’s exciting and exhausting; frustrating and rewarding; and sometimes the toughest part is learning how to work alongside others as a team. But when you all share a vision, the most amazing things can happen.
By the end of the first festival I was drained and relieved, as much as I was proud of everything that we had achieved. Lots of people came and enjoyed it. Not only that, but they wanted more. And more is what they have. The Bury Literature Festival is now a regular feature in the life of the town.
When the second festival came around, I had become a published author myself. I still helped out where I could be useful, but now I’d moved around to the other side of the counter as one of the authors in the programme. It was a proud moment to be speaking as a writer at a festival that I had helped to create.Â
Since then, I’ve published two more novels, a collection of short stories, a book of fables, and several more plays for theatre. Nowadays, I get invited to be part of book festivals that others have worked hard to create, and I have a much deeper appreciation of them.Â
I didn’t learn my lesson, though. Far from it. In 2023 I co-founded a sister festival, specifically for fringe literature, called The Foreword Festival. The experience of being part of the original team has been invaluable when running my own events, or perhaps I’m just a glutton for punishment. Either way, I’m so glad that I said ‘yes’ that day in Oakes Barn, Bury St Edmunds.Â
Jackie Carreira: author of Sleeping Through War, The Seventh Train, The Amber Library, and Notebook Number Nine. Co-founder of QuirkHouse Theatre Company and the Foreword Festival.
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