Posts by Louise Brice

We’re delighted to say that our full Stroud Book Festival 2023 programme of more than 30 events is now available to browse on our website – stroudbookfestival.org.uk.

It’s now just two weeks before tickets go on sale for Stroud Book Festival 2023. They will be available to purchase online, by phone, or in person from the Stroud Sub Rooms box office from Friday 8 September.

Dear Festival friends, It all went by so fast! But what a time we had at Stroud Book Festival 2022, across five days of wonderful events for readers of all ages.

Excitement is building for the seventh Stroud Book Festival, which gets under way in a week’s time on Wednesday 2nd November.

You can book tickets for these, and all our other events via the box office at Stroud Sub Rooms – www.subrooms.co.uk. You can also book by phone – 01453 796880 – or in-person (Tuesday-Saturday).

The warning could not be starker. “With every degree of temperature increase, roughly a billion people will be pushed outside the zone in which humans have lived for thousands of years. We are running out of time to manage the coming upheaval before it becomes overwhelming and deadly”. So writes award-winning science writer Gaia Vince in her new book, “Nomad Century: How to Survive the Climate Upheaval”.

Just under a month before the start of Stroud Book Festival 2022, and we’re happy to report that tickets are selling well for this year’s celebration of stories, ideas and community for readers of all ages.

At the age of 38, Reuben Coe was living in a care home for adults with learning disabilities. For over a year, including through the first months of the pandemic he had become non-verbal, and unable to express his thoughts and feelings except drawing on paper with felt-tip pens. He was deeply depressed and heavily medicated, struggling with the physical reality of having Down’s Syndrome and cut off from everyone he loved. A pitiful photo taken at this time shows Reuben at the window of the care home: his palm against the glass, his expression anguished. For this previously exuberant and independent man with a BTEC in drama, renowned for his singing, and for dressing up, and for jumping onto a podium and dancing with his shirt off in a gay club in Edinburgh one New Year’s Eve, his psychiatrist predicted only a 10% chance of a return to his former self.