Celebrities and authors help Oxfam to launch the UK’s first nationwide book festival
Author Fflur Dafydd supports Oxfam
With book sales raising £1.6 million for Oxfam every month, it makes sense that the charity would want to collaborate with writers in a fundraising venture. Bookfest, the UK’s first nationwide book festival, will run from July 4th to 18th in hundreds of venues, with help from celebrities and authors keen to draw attention to the literary event.
The festival aims to fight poverty through a love of reading by asking readers to donate to and buy from Oxfam shops, and come along to one of the hundreds of Bookfest events. The average selling price for one book is £1.60.
Twelve books would be enough to buy a emergency hygiene kit, while just four books could provide clean water for a family.
More than 280 book-related events will take place in bookshops and other venues around the country throughout the fortnight, featuring well-known authors from all over the UK. The events take in everything from author readings and poetry competitions to quizzes, auctions and even ghost walks, in venues from local Oxfam bookshops to the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London.
To boost the fundraising further, four volumes of short stories called Ox-Tales, featuring 38 of the UK’s top authors, will be published in July to raise money for Oxfam’s work around the world.
Available in bookstores from July 4th and published by Profile Books, they feature original stories from writers including John Le Carré, Alexander McCall Smith, Joanna Trollope, Ian Rankin, Mark Haddon, Helen Fielding, Jonathan Coe, Rose Tremain, DBC Pierre, Sebastian Faulks and Kate Atkinson.
Other celebrities and authors, including Fflur Dafydd, Bill Nighy, Alexei Sayle, Monica Ali, Joanna Trollope, Phillip Pullman and Mark Haddon, will be donating copies of their novels or volunteering in Oxfam bookshops. Other events around the country will include readings by poet Angela Cleland and others.
Author Phillip Pullman, who will volunteer in the Oxford Oxfam bookshop on July 4th, says:
“As someone who’s shopped in Oxfam bookshops and supported Oxfam’s work for years, I was delighted to hear about Bookfest, which is a brilliant idea. It will give book lovers all over the country the chance to indulge their deepest passion while helping to change lives for the better.”
Other authors who will be volunteering in their local Oxfam bookshop during Bookfest include Esther Freud, who will be in Highgate, London on July 8th, Jonathan Coe and William Sutcliffe, who will be at Bloomsbury Street, London on July 9th, and Hanif Kureishi, who will be at Portobello Road, London on July 10th.
David McCullough, Oxfam’s director of trading, says: “Book sales have been helping us in our fight against poverty for more than fifty years, as we’ve sold everything from the first ever Sherlock Holmes story to the latest Harry Potter novel. During Bookfest, we want people to donate to and buy from our bookshops so they can really see the impact that buying a book from Oxfam can have on the lives of poor people around the world.”
To find out more, please visit www.oxfam.org.uk/books
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