Dear Friends,

Welcome to the first Stroud Book Festival News of 2022. Though we may have gone a little quiet since our 2021 Festival last November, we have been busy behind the scenes. Following a few team changes, we are now forging ahead with the 2022 Festival.

We have set our 2022 dates and look forward to welcoming you to the seventh annual Stroud Book Festival from 2^nd to 6^th November.

For 2022, we are also thrilled to announce the creation of the Laurie Lee Prize for Writing. Open to unpublished Gloucestershire writers across a range of genres, the Laurie Lee Writing Prize has been created to acknowledge and honour the work of Stroud’s most famous son, Laurie Lee (1914-1997).

The new prize was the idea of bestselling Stroud novelist, Katie Fforde, and has been established under the umbrella of Stroud Book Festival with the blessing of Laurie Lee’s family, and his literary estate.

Two annual £1000 prizes will be awarded, one of which will go to a writer aged under 25. Announced in October 2022, the winners will be invited to read their winning entries at a public Laurie Lee Writing Prize event at Stroud Book Festival 2022. If you’d like to know more, please click here: https://stroudbookfestival.org.uk/about-the-laurie-lee-prize/

Other exciting plans are underway for our seventh annual Festival – which, as always will be a celebration of stories, ideas and community for readers of all ages. Once again we plan to bring you more than 30 varied events over five days, and this year for the first time will stage not one, but two days of events for local primary schools to cover a broader age-range of children.

We’ll be in touch with more news of the 2022 Festival soon – meanwhile thank you for all your support, and happy reading!

We’ll be in touch with more 2022 news soon.

With love from
The Stroud Book Festival team.