As regular Linda’s Book Bag readers know, I’m lucky enough to be involved with The Deepings Literary Festival and you can see what happened to me last year here. Following a very successful Read Dating in Bourne early in 2020 we should have had a second event in May at Deeping Community Library this year but unsurprisingly Covid 19 had other ideas! You can read all about the authors we had lined up and find out about their books here.

In spite of international events we are very much still here and planning for our next festival in 2021 which is due to take place from 28th April to 2nd May where we have a proposed line up that so far includes, amongst others, R.C.Bridgestock, Clara Barley, William Shaw, John Marrs, Jane E. James, Pam Rhodes, Milly Johnson, Ian Macmillan, Dorothy Koomson, Francis Pryor and Adam Croft. Whilst we hope this may be a real festival we have plans in place for a virtual event if need be!

Before then, however, we are delighted to offer three brilliant free events in our November Nights:

November Nights

A series of free online events over three Saturday evenings in November are set to be a trail blazer for the 2021 Deepings Literary Festival. We have a trio of best selling authors lined up to talk about their latest work and answer your questions too!

Join us in a Zoom conversation with Louise Doughty, Alison Bruce and Elly Griffiths where you’ll have the opportunity to hear the authors read from their books and participate in a question and answer session.

You’ll find all three events here. 

Saturday 14^th November 6.30PM-7.30PM: Louise Doughty

Saturday 21^st November 2020 6.30-7.30PM: Alison Bruce

Saturday 28^th November 2020 6.30-7.30PM: Elly Griffiths

Saturday 14^th November 6.30PM-7.30PM: Louise Doughty

A previous Deepings Literary Festival sell-out speaker, author Louise Doughty is a critic and cultural commentator for both UK and international newspapers and broadcasts regularly on the BBC. Her work has been translated into thirty languages. She lives in London.

Louise’s Black Water, was published in 2016 to critical acclaim in the UK and US, where it was nominated as one of the New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Her seventh, bestseller Apple Tree Yard, was adapted as a four-part drama for BBC One. Her sixth novel, Whatever You Love, was nominated for the Costa Novel Award and the Orange Prize for fiction and she has been nominated for many other awards including the Sunday Times Short Story Prize.

Her ninth book, Platform Seven, is set on Peterborough Station.

Saturday 21^st November 2020 6.30-7.30PM: Alison Bruce

A wonderful Deepings Literary Festival supporter, Alison Bruce is the author of eight crime novels and two non-fiction titles. Her first novel, Cambridge Blue (2008), described by Publishers Weekly as an ‘assured debut’ introduced both detective, DC Gary Goodhew, and her trademark Cambridge setting. She went on to write six further novels in the DC Goodhew series before writing the psychological thriller I Did It for Us.

Her work has attracted both critical acclaim and a loyal readership. In 2013 and 2016 Alison was short-listed for the Crime Writers’ Association Dagger in the Library Award.

The other books in the DC Goodhew series are The Siren (2010), The Calling (2011), The Silence (2012), The Backs (2013), The Promise (2016) and Cambridge Black (2017). Other works include two true crime books and a selection of short stories.

Alison is the patron of Lakenheath Library in Suffolk. She teaches creative writing and has completed a BSc in Crime and Investigation at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. She has two children, Lana and Dean, and five cats (Ben, Zorro, Chile, Zenith and Solo). In her spare time she is a rock ‘n’ roll DJ.

Her new novel, The Moment Before Impact, will be published in March 2021.

Saturday 28^th November 2020 6.30-7.30PM: Elly Griffiths

The Deepings Literary Festival is delighted to welcome their newly announced Patron, award winning and best-selling author, Elly Griffiths, to November Nights.

Elly Griffiths worked in publishing before becoming a full-time writer. She lives near Brighton with her husband, an archaeologist, and their two grown children.

Her series of Dr Ruth Galloway novels, featuring a forensic archaeologist, are set in Norfolk and regularly hit the Sunday Times top ten in hardback and paperback. The series has won the CWA Dagger in the Library and has been shortlisted three times for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. There are twelve books in the series so far with number thirteen,  The Night Hawk, out on 4th February 2021.

Her Brighton-based mystery series set in the 1950s and 1960s is inspired partly by her grandfather’s life on the stage and the war magician Jasper Maskelyne, who claimed to have spent the war creating large scale illusions to misdirect the enemy. One of the two leading characters in the series Max Mephisto is based on Maskelyne.

In 2017 she was the Programming Chair of Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Festival in Harrogate, the oldest and best-established crime fiction festival in the UK.

In 2018 Elly wrote her first standalone novel The Stranger Diaries. The novel was a top 10 paperback bestseller, selected for the BBC Radio 2 Book Club and as a summer 2019 Richard and Judy book.

In 2019 Elly published her first children’s book in spring 2019 to great reviews with a second recently published.

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We really excited to welcome such hugely talented authors and hope you’ll be able to join us in November. We’d love your questions for Louise, Alison and Elly too so that the event really belongs to readers. If you’d like to leave a question in the comments here you would be very welcome and they can be emailed to the festival after you’ve signed up to the event. Don’t forget to sign up here. See you in November!