Magic, murder and mammoths at the Wood Green Literary Festival

What a fabulous bookish weekend I've had! And it's all thanks to those two chaps at Big Green Books who brought a literary festival to Wood Green. One of my favourite authors came to speak, I was introduced to lots more amazing books and, something I'm really grateful for, some sort of reading epiphany has happened to my 6 yr old, a reluctant reader, who was so excited by washing a woolly mammoth that he took his signed copy of the book to school and read it to his class. Trust me, this is a HUGE step forward...a MAMMOTH one even.

We turned up to the children's events on Saturday a little late and unfortunately missed a bit of the Guy Bass session but what we did hear was very entertaining. Then, while my eldest went off to a Zoom Rockman comic workshop at the back of the hall, my youngest proceeded to fall in love with this book (and possibly its authors, Michelle Robinson and Kate Hindley). 

We took a break (shakes and cake at Tinseltown - well, we were having a treat) for the author Sally Nicholls but friends, who we met coming out as we returned, said she was great. 

A small but perfectly formed crowd of horror and fantasy fans gathered to hear the panel discussion on Monsters, Magic and Mayhem with Sam Enthoven, Steve Feasey and Conrad Mason. Really, there is absolutely *no better thing* to do at 5pm on a Saturday than discuss zombie apocalypses, pirates and goblins, teen werewolves and and ancient things that suck your personality out. The time flew by so quickly as we lost ourselves in tales of good and evil. "I'm getting the book about goblins and pirates", I whispered. My daughter turned to me and said one word, "Crawlers" (her nose has been buried in this ever since). We both agreed to share the werewolf book. 

Clutching our haul of signed books and free pens from Steve Feasey, we rushed home to get started on our finds.

The next day, Sunday, found me in the wonderful Jam and Jerusalem church hall of St Mark's, Noel Park, (see picture above which I took before the panel started - the chairs all filled up later) to see one of my absolute favourite authors Christopher Fowler, author of the Bryant and May series amongst many other books, and to discover three other historical crime novelists; DE Meredith, Lloyd Shepherd and RN Morris. The conversation centred around what influenced the authors to choose their subject matter, the research, the strength of a novel over a straight history book to create atmosphere (many historians moonlight as historical fiction writers) and the power of London to inspire. 

Chris Fowler also challenged the genre of crime fiction which he believes has lost its way in its quest for a faux realism. He got a lot of support from his fellow writers and from this audience member who long ago abandoned Patricia Cornwall for the delights of Ben Aaronovitch. 

Again I found myself with another of haul of books although not enough money to buy everything I wanted (this time).

I would like to thank Tim and Simon very much for bringing so much book related fun to rainy Wood Green. An urban literary festival is an amazing thing to do. I really really hope they are able to do it again. So many more stories to tell out there...