London Book & Screen Week
13- 19 April 2015
Steven Ellis talks to director Jacks Thomas about the literary event and embracing the screen
How did this eve nt come about?
It seemed a natural step to build on our day jobs. Each year 25,000 people from over 100 countries descend on London for one of the biggest events in the global publishing calendar – the London Book Fair. Books have always been, and continue to be, unbelievably flexible; it’s extraordinary to consider that over half of the top 20 global box office successes of the last decade were adapted from novels by UK writers. Alongside the book fair, events celebrating authors and creators take place in a variety of venues – bookshops, cinemas, universities, museums and high street stores. We’re in a unique position to link publishers with readers, and fans with their heroes. It’s an obvious step to try and aggregate all this activity under one umbrella.
What will the eve nt enta il?
Firstly, it’s hundreds of events spanning the whole capital: author talks, writing masterclasses, film screenings, a comics draw- along, fan expos, cook book demonstrations, bookshop crawls, literary salons, live readings, poetry parties, fiction prizes, book launches… the scope is huge. For the SFX community there’s the Guardian Masterclass in writing and publishing fantasy and dystopian fiction with Joe Abercrombie and Peter V Brett. Those partial to fan fiction will be in good company at Mugglenet’s Harry Potter fan expo. You can learn art techniques with a draw- along at Orbital Comics. No book-to- screen line up would be complete without a splash of Game Of Thrones, so we’re planning a social networking competition to choose favourite episodes. There will also be a number of screenings with partner OurScreen at Picturehouse Cinemas.
You’re ta king submissions for eve nt ideas on your website; how did that come about?
We want to give everyone a chance to join in, lots of events are taking place; we wanted to give everyone the opportunity to put them all in one place so readers and fans can find everything. LBSW is a platform for both the largest launches and the most niche reading groups. We can’t hope to know everything that’s going on so we’re asking people to let us know. The response has been fab with the first event submitted within minutes of LBSW being announced. New events are announced daily so watch out for our newsletters and check out the website: www.londonbookandscreenweek.co.uk