Headingley LitFest: Leeds Lit Fest Wins Best Literary Festival 2022

Monday, 16 May 2022

Leeds Lit Fest Wins Best Literary Festival 2022

Headingley LitFest is a partner of Leeds Lit Fest. Thanks to all those who voted!

Fiona Gell writes:

LEEDS LIT FEST WINS BEST LITERARY FESTIVAL IN THE NATIONAL SABOTEUR AWARDS FOR THE SECOND TIME

Leeds Lit Fest is excited to announce that it has won Best Literary Festival in the Saboteur Awards 2022. It’s the second time the Festival has won this prestigious national award. The first time was in 2020.

Leeds Lit Fest took place on Saturday 26th Feb to Sunday 6th March this year with more than fifty events over nine days with a mixture of in-person and online events.

The Saboteur Awards, started by Sabotage Reviews, spotlight a diverse range of literary publications, events and writers on the UK indie literature scene and have been running since 2011. The awards are voted for by the public and are much prized and sought after by the writing community.

Carl Hutton, Chair of Leeds Lit Fest and CEO of the Leeds Library said, “When we first discussed the opportunity for Leeds to have a literature festival 5 years ago, all of the partners agreed we wanted to create something that was unique to the city and a new model for literary festivals. We think we achieved this through a broad mixture of literary inspired events spanning a number of art forms, and so to win this award for the second time, shows that others have recognized that as well.”

Fiona Gell, Leeds Lit Fest partner from Leeds Big Bookend said: “The Leeds Lit Fest partners are absolutely delighted to have won the Best Literary Festival category in the Saboteur Awards against such strong competition for the second time. It is really humbling to know that people took time out to vote for us and we thank them sincerely. We’re looking forward to 2023 as Leeds gears up for an extraordinary Year of Culture and we cannot wait to be part of that celebration.”

Photo: Best Literary Festival, The Saboteur Awards 2022.

Photographic images from the Festival can be found here. Please credit photographer Michael Godsall

For further information and media requests contact Fiona Gell, Leeds Lit Fest partner at enquiries@leedslitfest.co.uk| 07742 861889

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LITERARY HEADINGLEY

Headingley is just the place for it! Don't expect a big circus with marquees, though: we're not at that stage yet. We're all volunteers as well.

Our venues include the HEART Centre on Bennett Road, the New Headingley Club on St Michael's Road, friendly cafés, historic local cinemas, Headingley Library, people's houses and the historic Leeds Library in Commercial Street, city centre.

Headingley's Literary Links

Headingley has strong connections with many writers:

Arthur Ransome was born in Headingley, J R R Tolkien lived at 5 Holly Bank and also at 2 Darnley Road, West Park when he was reader in English Language at the University of Leeds 1920 - 25, Alan Bennett lived over a butcher's shop opposite the Three Horseshoes, now Royale Dry Cleaners.

Lucy Newlyn has published poetry about her early life in Headingley, George Orwell stayed at 21 Estcourt Avenue with his sister Marjorie and her husband Humphrey 'Humpy' Dakin (with whom he visited the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth), T S Eliot used to visit his mother-in-law in Weetwood Lane, William Fryer Harvey was brought up in Spring Bank, Trevor Griffiths lived just off Victoria Road on Winstanley Terrace, Jon Silkin's first office of STAND magazine was his flat at 144 Otley Road, Sir Geoffrey Hill lived in Shire Oak Road, Peter Redgrove lived in Headingley between 1962 and 1965 when he was Gregory Fellow of Poetry at the University of Leeds, and playwright Kay Mellor still lives near The Hollies in Far Headingley.

Wilson Barrett, the charismatic first manager of the Grand Theatre, Leeds (a prolific playwright as well), lived in Beech Grove Terrace, Woodhouse in the 1870s. His house was a meeting place for many writers, artists and visitors to Leeds - such as W. S. Gilbert, George Grossmith and Atkinson Grimshaw.

Headingley LitFest 2020 was the thirteenth. The fourteenth will take place from March 2021 and will be adapted to the rules of the Covid pandemic. We are now a proud part of the annual Leeds Lit Fest.