"I'll be honest with you — I didn't set out to run a book festival.
I set out to find what happens after the last page. Not the sequel — something better than that.
The thing is, I've spent years loving stories. Writing them, reading them, turning them over in my head at half two in the morning when I should have been sleeping. And somewhere along the way I realised I wanted to know more — what happens when the author hands their book to a director and watches something entirely new come out the other side. Or where a cartoonist explains why a single panel can say what three chapters can't. Or where a novelist admits that the darkest thing they ever wrote was also, somehow, the funniest. That's the conversation I wanted.
I also had a dream — and I use that word fully aware of how it sounds — of bringing a proper literary event to the Brighton Fringe. Not a reading, not a signing queue, but a full day that felt like it belonged in this city. Brighton has always been a place that takes creativity seriously and has a bit of fun doing it, and I couldn't think of a better home for what I had in mind.
So I did what you do when you're either very determined or very foolish — and I'll leave that to you to decide — I started building it.
What I didn't expect was the people who said yes.
The line-up for Beyond the Book Festival has been curated with some of Brighton's finest: novelists Araminta Hall, Erin Young, Graham Bartlett, Phil Viner, and Denise Tyler — writers I admire enormously, who believed in this from the start and helped shape it into something worth a day of your time. I'm very glad they did.
Join us on the 16 May at the Friends Meeting House, right opposite Goldsboro Books Brighton.
Mark it in the diary. Invite your friends. We’d love to see you there.
And if you've been waiting for a day that puts the story back at the centre of things — well, I think this might be it."
- David Fennell, Festival Director
GET YOUR TICKET TO BEYOND THE BOOK HERE
Full Schedule Below:
SILVER SCREEN AND HOLLYWOOD DREAMS - 10:00am
Araminta Hall, author of Imperfect Women, now a major series just released for Apple+ TV, and Emma Jane Unsworth, novelist and BAFTA-nominated screenwriter, discuss the art of adaptation and reveal what it’s like to see your words transformed for the screen. Hosted by screenwriter and director Will Jewell.
COMIC STRIP - 11:00am
Can a single panel say what three chapters can't? BAFTA-winning author and cartoonist Andy Riley, comic artist and educator Ian Williams, graphic novelist Myfanwy Tristram, graphic artist Rhys Wootton, and graphic novelist and former UK Comics Laureate Hannah Berry take on one of fiction's oldest arguments. Expect strong opinions and beautiful evidence.
TWISTED TRUTHS: Who can you trust? - 12:00pm
The best crime fiction doesn't just ask whodunit. It asks - who do you believe? Sunday Times bestseller and Traitors star, Harriet Tyce, master of suspense, Katherine Bradley, and bestselling thriller writer, Sam Ripley, write books where the truth keeps shifting and nobody in the room can really be trusted. Not the witnesses. Not the institutions. Not even the narrator. In conversation with Katherine Armstrong, publishing director at Simon & Schuster.
EYES WIDE OPEN? 1:30pm
Join cops turned crime writers Graham Bartlett and Gary (G.D) Wright in this one off immersive workshop where you will witness first hand, maybe even get involved in, the intensity and demands of responding to a crime in action. Too much detail would be a giveaway, but you don’t want to miss the adrenaline rush of emergency response and investigation as Graham and Gary put some “lucky" audience members through their paces as they would in the real world. Rest assured, no one gets hurt or locked up in the creation of this experience!
FINE. EVERYTHING IS FINE. 2:30pm
Funny fiction isn't the easy option. It's often the sharpest one. Kathleen Whyman, Lauren Bravo and David Fennell write about modern chaos, wellness culture, people-pleasing, and murder. Three very different books, one shared conviction: that a well-placed joke cuts deeper than a knife. Moderated by Denise Tyler.
TOXIC TRAITS AND RED FLAGS - 3:30pm
Relationships are fertile ground for novelists who like to dive deep into the complexities of danger that doesn’t present in a typically violent way. Join novelists, Hattie Williams, Essie Fox and Clare Leslie Hall for an exploration of love on the page, with Stu Cummins. Because, sometimes, your own mind is the scariest place to be.
ADELE PARKS & JIM PARKS: IN CONVERSATION - 4:30pm
An hour with one of Britain's best-loved novelists and her husband. Rare, intimate, funny and not to be missed.
AND THAT'S NOT ALL
Between sessions, Goldsboro Books will be at the signing table. Sixteen writers will be pitching to agents. And from 6pm, the festival moves across the road to Goldsboro Books for the after party. Ticket holders only.
