Dear Festival Friends

It’s out! Your free copy of this year’s printed Stroud Book Festival brochure is now available to pick up from venues across Stroud including Stroud Bookshop, Stroud Sub Rooms, Lansdown Hall and Stroud Library.

And with just under five weeks to go before the 2024 Festival begins, and with many of our events selling fast, now is a very good time to browse our brochure and buy your tickets. You can also continue to view all our events online at stroudbookfestival.org.uk.

You can purchase your tickets from thesubrooms.co.uk. You can also book by calling 01453 796880, or in-person at the box office at the Sub Rooms (Tuesday-Saturday, 9-4pm).

If you need any additional inspiration, may we suggest:

For adults: A RIDE ACROSS AMERICA with Simon Parker

With the next US presidential election just over a month away, we take you under the skin of Middle America, to discover the concerns of ordinary Americans; in the company of travel writer and filmmaker, Simon Parker.

In 2023, finding the ‘Trump and guns’ headlines increasingly frustrating, Simon cycled right across America, from the northern western tip of Washington State to the southern tip of Florida, in a bid to encounter ordinary middle Americans and listen without prejudice to what they had to say. His resulting book “A Ride Across America: A 400 Mile Adventure Through the Small Towns & Big Issues of the USA”, is an enthralling – and often surprising – portrait of an enormously diverse country we routinely over-simplify.

You can read Stroud Book Festival Programme Director Caroline Sanderson’s interview with Simon here. At the time of this interview, Simon said he wouldn’t be at all surprised if Trump won the election. But that was pre-Kamala!

For everyone aged 7-107!
THE WHAT ON EARTH FAMILY QUIZ with Andrew Pettie

What better use for your brain on the final morning of Stroud Book Festival 2024 than to put it to the test with questions like these:

How many planets in our solar system would fit between Earth and the Moon?* How many cups of snot does your body make in a day? And how many people are flying up in the sky at this very moment?

These questions and more will be answered during our fun and fascinating family quiz hosted by Andrew Pettie, author of the “Encyclopedia Infographica”, a new visual children’s encyclopedia from Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Fantastic prizes are on offer, including signed copies of “Encyclopedia Infographica”! So don’t miss this chance to test your knowledge and learn lots of mind-blowing new facts along the way.

*All of them!

 

Finally… STROUD SHORT STORIES: ‘FAMILY AFFAIR’

Tickets are now on sale for the 28th event from our friends at the ever-brilliant Stroud Short Stories. This latest event will feature ten extraordinary stories, written and read by Gloucestershire authors on the theme of family.

Now in its fourteenth year, SSS’s considerable reputation is based on the unfailingly high quality of the stories read at its events, which are selected from the hundred or so submitted for each one.

SSS events almost always sell out in advance, so you should book early to avoid disappointment.

Tickets are £12 and available from the Cotswold Playhouse website

Please follow us on social media for all the latest updates.

Twitter: @bookstroud

Facebook: facebook.com/stroudbookfestival

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With love from

The Stroud Book Festival team x