This spring sees the launch of Notting Hill’s first ever literary festival, with talks from some of the UK’s finest, funniest and darkest writers on everything from food, sport, fiction, well-being – and Rastamouse.
It runs from 12 – 14th April, the weekend before the world’s books industry descends on London for theLondon International Book Fair.
The programme boasts the first Once Upon a Deadline competition to take place in London. OUAD is a weekend-long write-a-thon that at Nibfest will pitch 6 celebrated authors – Alex Marwood, Evie Wyld, Will Storr, Sabrina Mahfouz and Abigail Tartellin, as well as 1 unpublished writer from Wattpad – against each other and the clock as they embark on a real-time writing odyssey across the area. Sunday night sees our intrepid writers return to read us the results after 36 hours of scribbling for Nibfest’s closing event.
Other highlights include blogging phenomenon LibertyLondonGirl on the how to do fashion forward and other timely topics such as the business of blogging. Thomasina Miers gives us a spicy glimpse from her new book, all about chilli. Blowing the lid off our current sporting obsession with cycling, ex-racer Richard Moore and Anthony Clavane, acclaimed authors both, are chaired by sports film director James Erskine. Jonty Heaversedge, the BBC’s ‘Street Doctor’ talks to celebrated features writer (and mother of 3) Clover Stroud about achieving a balance of ‘mindfulness’ in our stressful lives. And for a dose of terrifying escapism, Sabine Durrant will be discussing her thrilling new novel Under Your Skin.
Nibfest is a social enterprise dedicated to supporting Notting Hill’s literary venues and communities and inspiring and engaging new audiences in the world of books. It’s the brainchild of long-time Notting Hill resident and literary agent Laetitia Rutherford.
When? 2014 TBC- 12 -14 April, 2013
Where? Ladbroke Grove
Website? Nibfest
Social Media?
Who? Below
| LibertyLondonGirl started out as an anonymous blog when Conde Nast fashion journalist Sasha Wilkins went to New York as a London stringer for the American press. Her jottings on fashion, food, and lifestyle grew into a viral phenomenon, and she can now count a quarter of a million page views per month. After guarding her anonymity for 3 years, she revealed her identity in Grazia magazine and went on to set up a social media consulting business. Nibfest looks forward to her upcoming book. |
Sam Baker is a writer, broadcaster and doyenne of the glossy magazine world. She was until recently much-loved editor-in-chief of Red magazine, is also former editor of Cosmopolitan,and is credited with revitalizing the younger girls’ magazine market with the launch of J-17.She did this alongside developing her career as a novelist, with her debut The Stepmother’s Support Group. With five novels to her name, and more to come, Sam Baker is now writing full-time. |
Genevieve Webster is the co-writer with Michael de Souza of the children’s entertainment series Rastamouse. She is a filmmaker and illustrator, and after meeting Michael da Souza in Kensignton Sports Centre, they now partner in the creation of the Rastamouse series.Michael de Souza is a writer and swimming instructor, and a former engineer. A long-time resident of Notting Hill, he arrived in the area aged eight in the 1960s from Trinidad. He and Genevieve Webster developed the Rastamouse series together, at first self-publishing a book, then going to see a hit series commissioned by ITV. |
| Thomasina Miers fell in love with Mexico when she went travelling there aged 18. She soon returned – to live in Mexico City and set up a cocktail bar. She won Masterchef in 2005, before starting to cook professionally for Skye Gyngell at Petersham Nurseries. Her first book Soup Kitchen, published by HarperCollins in 2005, has raised almost £100,000 for charity. Since then she has published 3 cookery books, including Mexican Food Made Simple. She presented ‘A Cook’s Tour of Spain’ in 2008. In addition, Thomasina Miers runs Wahaca, a restaurant with several London branches serving Mexican street food. Nibfest hears rumour of a delicious variety of dishes using chili in her upcoming book. |
| Jonty Heaversedge is a GP, author, and TV presenter. He studied medicine at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine and is now a partner in a GP practice in South East London. He hit our TV screens when he presented 3 series of the BBC1 primetime programme Street Doctor, as well as the Bafta-nominated CBBC series The Smokehouse, taking a hands-on approach to helping children help their parents quit smoking. He is particularly committed to the deeper wellbeing of his patients, and specializes in the areas of stress-management and addiction. This is the background to his first book The Mindful Manifesto, exploring how doing less and noticing more can help you thrive in a stressed out world. |
| Clover Stroud is one of Britain’s most sought after voices in women’s journalism, writing across the broadsheets and glossies for, among others, The Saturday and Sunday Times, theSaturday and Sunday Telegraph, the Daily Mail, Spectator, Tatler, Conde Nast Traveller,National Geographic Traveller, Easy Living and Red Magazine. She has appeared on chat-shows and radio, and is particularly well known for her interviews and features in Sunday Times Style. In 2009, she wrote and presented a Channel 4 documentary called ‘The Insider: Let Them Die’ about looking after her mother, who has lived for twenty years with a severe brain injury after a riding accident. A former rodeo star in Texas, Clover is still a keen horsewoman. She balances her career with being mother to three children. |
| Anthony Clavane is an acclaimed sports journalist and author of Does Your Rabbi Know You’re Here?: The Story of English Football’s Forgotten Tribeand Promised Land: A Northern Love Story – a history of Jewish people and football, winner of the Football Book of the Year and Sports Book of the Year 2011. He is published by Random House, and writes regularly for The Times and the Guardian. |
Richard Moore is a writer and former racing cyclist. He represented Great Britain at the Tour of Langkawi and Scotland at the PruTour and the 1998 Commonwealth Games, where he competed in the road race and the time trial. He is the author of The Dirtiest Race in History and most recently – tackling our current national sporting obsession – Sky’s the Limit: Wiggins and Cavendish: the Quest to Conquer the Tour de France. |
| James Erskine is an Emmy-nominated producer/director and founder of New Black Films, best known for its cinema documentaries about sport. His 2010 film One Night in Turin was adapted from Pete Davies’s memoir of the 1990 World Cup, All Played Out. In 2011, he produced From the Ashes about Botham’s legendary series of 1981, and he has recently completed The Battle of the Sexes about the birth of women’s professional sport. Nibfest looks forward to his latest project The Accidental Death of a Cyclist, loosely based on Matt Rendell’s biopic of the Italian Tour De France winner Marco Pantani – a controversial subject for a nation increasingly obsessed with cycling. |
| Shane Spall is from a large Midlands family. Her mother called her Number Five, and her father called her Shane after a character in a Western played by Alan Ludd. The day in 1981 when the young actor Timothy Spall arrived at New Street, Birmingham, she was living in a council flat and working in a Quaker hotel. They fell in love when Timothy Spall accidentally touched her arm, and have now been married for 31 years. Shane Spall’s book, which won the British Travel Press Awards’s Travel Narrative Book of the Year, is about their journey around Britain on a barge, and why and how they set off on this madcap adventure. |
| Tim Hayward is a food writer and broadcaster, with a wide-ranging food column in the Financial Times.He also contributes regularly to the Guardian, Observer and food publications like Waitrose Food Illustrated, Delicious, Olive andSaveur. You can often hear him on BBC Radio 4’s The Food Programme and The Kitchen Cabinet. He started one of the first and most influential food blogs, Fire and Knives, now also a successful print magazine. Nibfest relishes the thought of his book Food DIY, all about curing, smoking and preserving, out this summer. |
If you are involved in this festival you can update or change details via the organisers page . Authors can list here.