Hang up the bunting and get out your bookmarks. Notting Hill is to have its inaugural literary festival. The chic postcode has long been home to well-known writers from Richard Curtis to Rachel Johnson but Nibfest, the Notting Hill International Book Festival, is the first time the area has put on a literary event to rival the popular Richmond and Stoke Newington festivals.
Literary agent and founder Laetitia Rutherford, sister of Gosford Park actress Camilla, says she has chosen to fill the programme with a diverse range of writers in contrast to more conservative events such as the Oxford Literary Festival, “which is full of very established, elderly male authors”.
Instead, guest speakers over the long weekend of April 12-14 will include the novelist Evie Wyld, fashion blogger LibertyLondonGirl and the creators of Rastamouse. The most unusual event will be the Wattpad-sponsored write-a-thon, Once Upon a Deadline, in which eight writers will have just 72 hours to create a story in front of an audience, using Notting Hill landmarks for inspiration.
While this might have echoes of the Monty Python live-novel writing sketch — “Thomas Hardy dips the pen in ink and he’s off!” — Rutherford promises the ground-breaking event will “make writing both social and dramatic, which is very hard to do”.
