Holly Pester is a poet and writer. She has worked in sound art and performance, with BBC Radio, Women’s Art Library and Wellcome Collection. Keiran Goddard grew up in Shard End, Birmingham. He is the author of two poetry collections, and two novels: Hourglass, which was widely acclaimed and longlisted for the Desmond Elliott prize, and I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning, which will be published in February 2024.

The Lodgers by Holly Pester

A stunning first novel from Holly Pester – a writer already hailed as one of the best poets of her generation.

“What it said to me was that I was here again, I was back, back from the great nowhere of somewhere else, returned, all too officially, to the whereabouts of Moffa.”

After a year away, a woman arrives back in her hometown to keep an eye on her wayward mother, Moffa. Living in a precarious sub-let, she is always on edge, anticipating a visit from the landlord or the arrival of the other resident. But her thoughts also drift back to the rented room she has just left, now occupied by a new lodger she has never met, but whose imagined navigations within the house and home become her fascination.

The minor dramas of temporary living are prised open and ransacked in Holly Pester’s irreverent reckoning with those who house us. This is a story about what it means to live and love within and outside of family structures. It is also a stunning first novel from a writer already hailed as one of the best poets of her generation.

I See Building Fall Like Lightning

Five friends. Five lives. Countless hopes.

Patrick, Shiv, Rian, Oli and Conor grew up together. They played together, skipped school together, and dreamt of everything they’d do with their lives.

Now they are thirty, and only Rian has made it out of the estate and moved away to another city, but his money doesn’t stop him clinging to a vision of the past that is quickly slipping away. Oli is fading by the day, drinking and snorting his way through the endless boredom, while Conor has a baby on the way and a business plan he hopes will change everything. Patrick and Shiv are as in love as ever, but even they are rocked when an old secret opens up new wounds.

Bold, ambitious and stylistically striking, I See Buildings Fall like Lightning asks what happens when all the things we expect from our lives end up not happening. It lays bare the ways that place and circumstance shape us, explores the redeeming and transforming beauty of friendship and examines the true limits of hope and forgiveness

Wednesday 7th February at 6pm
Venue: Red Lion Books, Colchester
£5 ticket price is redeemable against Holly’s book, on the evening.

Book tickets: redlionbooks.co.uk

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Wes Streeting, Labour’s Shadow Minister for Health, had an emotional reunion with his former primary school teacher at his book launch in Colchester in June.

Wes, whose autobiography One Boy, Two Bills and a Fry Up has just been published, was surprised to find out that Dorothy Eden was sitting in the audience at the Lakeside Theatre.

“You changed my life” he told her “You saw something in me and put me on the right track.”

During the event, organised by Essex Book Festival, Wes described how his life could have gone in a very different direction. One of his grandfathers was a convicted armed robber and he grew up in a household in East London without much money around.

In the book he praises his former Year Six teacher for her devotion to the pupils of St Peter’s Primary in Tower Hamlets and tells how she steered him towards success at school and beyond.

Wes was being interviewed by Professor Pam Cox, City Councillor and Labour’s Parliamentary Candidate for Colchester.

“It was a surprisingly emotional evening” said Pam, “we had Wes’s mum as well as his former teacher in the audience and it felt like we really learned what makes him tick.”

The talk was attended by over 150 people and was the final discussion event of this year’s Essex Book Festival.

Photos by Colchester Labour Party

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Whether it’s making your own giant jelly fish out of a plastic bottles and bags (bring you own if you can) or joining in our quest to plant 1000 sunflowers in recycled festival brochures and coffee cups in solidarity with the Ukraine and also wild bees, their main pollinator, at our Greenwood Words Day at Burnham-on-Crouch on 2nd June.

Helping children’s author Ray Star and digital artist Lily Hunter Green Solve the World’s Worst Crime: Climate Change in our special Earthlings Tent which forms part of our Criminally Good Day at High House Production Park on 11th June.

Or simply sitting back and enjoying Theatre Lark’s free family performance of What! A Load of Rubbish at Cressing Temple Barns located in one of the giant oak barns that are playing host to our Midsummer Madness day on 25th June.

The icing on the eco-cake though has to be launching the festival into Space with the Essex Steamettes, a group of young female coders, at Hylands House on 19th June. Quite how they will be doing it, and why, will be revealed on the day!

All of these activities are free. Some of them are drop-in, others require tickets in advance.

To see all of our free events go to our Events List and search for the category FREE

Who Are We Now? Firstsite, 4th June
Platinum Meditations

When we realised that this year’s Essex Book Festival was going to coincide with the Queen’s Jubilee Weekend celebrations, the challenge was to come up with something a bit different for Colchester, given that it’s one of the UK’s oldest recorded towns stretching back to Boudica and beyond.

Something that would give us an opportunity to explore where and who we are now. After all, there have been some pretty monumental changes since the Queen came to the throne in 1952.

We are thrilled to be welcoming Jason Cowley, Essex-born award-winning journalist/writer and Editor-in-Chief of The New Statesman to talk about his latest book Who Are We Now? Stories of Modern England. Jason gives an account of an England poised on the brink of enormous change.

Spanning the years since the election of Tony Blair’s New Labour government to the aftermath of the Covid pandemic, the book investigates how England has changed and how those changes have affected us.

Cowley weaves together the seemingly disparate stories of the Chinese cockle-pickers who drowned in Morecambe Bay, the East End Imam who was tested during a summer of terror, the pensioner who campaigned against the closure of her GP’s surgery and Gareth Southgate’s transformation of English football culture. And in doing so, Cowley shows the common threads that unite them, whether it is attitudes to class, nation, identity, belonging, immigration, or religion.

‘I can’t tell you how refreshing it is in these polarised times to read a book on politics that doesn’t have an axe to grind . . . an essential read.’

The Sunday Times

Running alongside Jason’s event we are equally delighted to be hosting the first of two workshops led by Cultural Historian/Mythographer/Novelist Marina Warner, Poet/Writer Philip Terry and Songwriter/Writer Adrian May to create our own A Living Almanac.

Most people are familiar with Whittaker’s Almanack and Wisden Almanack. So what is A Living Alamanac?

Almanacs have provided knowledge and foreknowledge of important dates, beliefs, stories portents and charms for centuries – calendars that offer an alternative form of time-keeping.

Our A Living Almanac will use words, images, local myths, historic events, songs, memories and the imagination to create and grow a collective community almanac build capturing the essence of now as we celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.

See our Events List for details of these and all of the events in this year’s Essex Book Festival

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The good news is that Mark has been long-listed for the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award 2022 for his book Rabbit Hole. Mark will be talking about his latest book The Murder Book as well as his colourful crime-writing career – we’re sure he’ll have a word of two to say about Rabbit Hole too!

More information and booking details for Mark Billingham’s event

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For example, how can we reasonably choose between Victoria Shepherd talking about her fabulous debut book A History of Delusions: The Glass King, A Substitute Husband, and A Walking Corpse at Maldon Library, and The Guardian’s hilariously funny, outrageously acerbic political satirist John Crace taking Westminster to task in his latest book A Farewell To Calm: How To Survive The New Normal? An ongoing dilemma in Festival HQ.

The same applies for Maggie Gee who will be talking about her book The Red Children at Brentwood Library at exactly the same time that writer Nick Higham will be sharing insights into his fascinating book The Mercenary River – a tale of greed, complacency, high finance and low politics – at Grays Library, and Sunday Times Bestseller Anna Whitehouse of ‘Mother Pukka’ fame talking about her explosive debut novel: Underbelly at Anglia Ruskin University. Don’t know about you but we’re down to drawing straws this end…

See you very soon!

Greenwood Words – Burnham-on-Crouch

We’re really excited to be heading to Burnham-on-Crouch on 2nd June for our bumper one-day event Greenwood Words: part of our Jubilee celebrations, including performances by leading East Anglian storytellers Glenys Newton and Marion Campion who will be channelling King Canute, Neptune and The Green Man amongst others, a host of free family arts and crafts workshops all focusing on The Natural World, plus a plethora of pop-up writing desks dotted around town waiting to be scribbled at.

One thing not to be missed is William Sieghart’s The Poetry Pharmacy: Tried-and-True Prescriptions for the Heart, Mind and Soul.

Come along to this unique event to hear William, publisher, philanthropist and founder of the Forward Prizes for Poetry speak about how poetry has been such an obvious source of inspiration and comfort during the pandemic, and beyond that, his ‘live prescriptions’ and poem suggestions for the audience, their friends and loved ones.

In the words of Stephen Fry:

“Here is balm for the soul, fire for the belly, an arm around the lonely shoulder, a matchless compound of hug, tonic and kiss.”

Stephen Fry

Find out more about The Poetry Pharmacy

The Human Library – Don’t Judge A Book By Its Cover
Mercury Theatre – 11th June

What is The Human Library? Just like a real library, visitors to The Human Library can borrow a book from a range of titles. The difference is that the books are People, and reading is a Conversation. Books in our Human Library come from all walks of life, and each has a different story to tell.

Come along, connect with people you wouldn’t normally meet, and help us celebrate positive differences in our community.

Find out more about The Human Library

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