Huddersfield Daily Examiner

Festival taster is flippin’ great

AT PREVIEW OF LITERATURE EVENT

- By MARTIN SHAW martin.shaw@reachplc.com @MartinShaw­WRNS

THE ever-popular Huddersfie­ld Literature Festival is celebratin­g Shrove Tuesday with a preview of next month’s event.

Pancakes and poetry will be the order of the day at the Festival Preview on Tuesday (6pm) at Heritage Quay at the University of Huddersfie­ld.

The annual preview night is where the final festival line-up is announced and guests can pick up copies of the printed programme.

This year will feature a reading by Michael Stewart from a new edition of his poetry collection Couples, a darkly comic sequence of poems that explore the nature of co-dependency.

Michael will then be ‘In Conversati­on With’ debut author Sairish Hussain.

Born and brought up in Bradford, Sairish studied English Language and Literature at the University of Huddersfie­ld and progressed on to an MA in Creative Writing.

She completed her PhD in 2019, after being awarded the university’s ViceChance­llor’s Scholarshi­p.

Sairish will be talking about her debut novel, The Family Tree, a moving multi-generation­al story of love and family, chosen by Cosmopolit­an magazine as ‘One of the best new books by black and POC authors in 2020.’

The preview will also see the premier of a three-minute animated film, created by award-winning Huddersfie­ld company, Fettle Animation, as part of the Festival project: The Creative Mind.

A partnershi­p between the festival and Words in Mind – a Volunteeri­ng Kirklees bibliother­apy project – the film explores ideas around creativity and mental wellbeing, with contributi­ons from Kit de Waal, Joanne Harris, Jackie Kay, Lisa Luxx, Nikesh Shukla and Lemn Sissay.

Tickets for the preview are free from www.huddlitfes­t.org.uk/event/HLF2020Pre­view.

HLF2020 runs from March 19-29. This year’s line-up includes 2019 Booker Prize-winner Bernardine Evaristo, ‘Queen of Crime’ Val McDermid, poet and festival patron Lemn Sissay, and Strictly profession­al dancer and best-selling novelist Anton Du Beke.

There will also be other events including: Gentleman Jack: The Real Anne Lister, Being Mr Wickham, Celebratin­g Toni Morrison, a Moomins puppet show and a Qawalli Night, along with workshops, performanc­e poetry, several free children’s events and a variety of discussion topics.

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Michael Stewart

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