Dear Festival Friends

Two simple words, but ones filled with gratitude for helping us to make Stroud Book Festival 2025 our most successful ever.

After five fun-packed days and 40+ events, including seven for local primary schools, this year’s festival came to a close with more than 6500 tickets sold.

Whichever events you attended – and we know that many of you came to quite a few – we hope you had a marvellous time. In their own imitable ways, our wonderful authors variously provided entertainment full of fun and laughter; riveting and stimulating conversations; and illuminating talks for readers of all ages.

We would like to say an enormous THANK YOU to all those who helped make this year’s Festival happen: our loyal supporters and sponsors; Arts Council England; our venues and their wonderful staff; our lovely independent booksellers, Stroud Bookshop and the Yellow-Lighted Bookshop; Katie Beard of Rooksmoor Press for our glorious 2025 design; our amazing Festival volunteers who lent us their time, hard work and goodwill; and most of all to EVERYONE who bought tickets and helped make the numbers add up.

We know that some of you were disappointed to miss out on tickets for some of our most popular sellout events. The GOOD NEWS is that we are already working hard behind the scenes to produce videos of these events which will shortly be available to view online for a modest annual donation.

Stroud Book Festival welcomes feedback on any aspect of your Festival experience – if you’d like to provide this, please do email us at info@stroudbookfestival.org.uk.

Next year’s Stroud Book Festival will take place from 4-8 November 2026. Mark your calendars now!

With love from

The Stroud Book Festival team x