Fishbourne Literary Festival is hoping for another sell-out this year

It’s all happening on Saturday, April 5, with all talks taking place in St Peter and St Mary Church, Fishbourne.

The programme for the day is 9am doors open; 9.45am opening remarks – Mother Jessica Reid (UKHarvest is the charity partner for 2025, an environmental charity helping local communities eat more healthily and fight food waste); and welcome address – Mark Hoult.

Then come the authors: 10-10.45am – David Hewson, introduced by Mark Hoult. 11.15am-12 – Erica James in conversation with Mark Hoult. 12.30-1.30pm – Dangerous Women: panel discussion featuring Elizabeth Buchan, Isabelle Grey, and Merle Nygate, chaired by Mark Hoult. 1.30-2.30pm – lunch. 2.30-3.15pm – Xiaolu Guo, introduced by Mark Hoult; and 4-4.45pm – Paul Kerensa, introduced by Fee Mak.

Chairman Simon Cox is delighted with the programme that has come together: “Last year was a very good festival. All our authors were exceptional. We had a minor scare when one of our authors had to pull out at the last minute through illness but we managed to pick up a substitute. We had a very good attendance. It was a sell-out and everybody seemed very happy.”

This year they've managed to get out the programme early and get the tickets on sale in good time, which leaves Simon hoping that this year will be another sell-out: “We know that we have got a really loyal following. This is our eighth year and we have built up a database so I'm feeling quite confident. A sell-out is about 120 people.”

On the back of such success, the festival is expanding into the summer: “The year of Covid we had a two-day event lined up and two weeks before that we had to cancel the whole thing. Since then we have felt more comfortable doing a one-day event until we are absolutely guaranteed to sell out the whole day in advance but this year we are launching a new event in the summer. Rather than doing two days together, we will have a new one-day event which will be the Fishbourne garden show and literary festival on August 9. It will be more fund-raising for the church roof and it will be the same format of four or five authors who will speak in the church. They will all have either written novels about gardening or have written books about gardens. Plus we will also have an outside section where we will encourage people that are maybe growers or are garden centres or maybe craftspeople to have a stall. We will also have a book stall and cream teas and Pimm’s and the usual range of homemade cakes. If the weather is good, it's going to be beautiful.”

Especially as in recent times the team have started wilding the church and have won a bronze medal for doing so.

As for the church itself it's a great venue: “It has got a really good acoustic. It has been used occasionally for classical music, either recording or concerts. The walls are super thick, the floor is stone and the ceilings are high. It's great. It is also historic. But it's also one of those churches that are within touching distance of Chichester Harbour and the water meadows so it has a beautiful aspect.”