A celebration of all things literary takes place this month throughout the Tees Valley area.
The Crossing the Tees Book Festival will offer a wide range of events for the public to enjoy, with a plethora of participation events and creative workshops, performance events, and the chance to meet authors, poets and publishers.
Organised by the library services of Stockton, Middlesbrough, Hartlepool, Redcar & Cleveland and Darlington, and giving a local flavour to the schedule, are a vast number of homegrown writers who have found success from their experiences of living in the area.
Amongst the events kicking off the festival is a performance of Kate Fox’s show, ‘Where There’s Muck There’s Bras’. Taking place at Acklam Community Hub on Saturday 8th June, this stand-up poetry show is a hilarious and thought-provoking look at the great women in northern history. Previous performances to this show in Newcastle have sold out quickly, so get your tickets as soon as you can!
Whilst there are several ‘meet the author’ events to choose from, a real stand out for me is ‘A Thrilling Evening With Bestselling Authors C.L.Taylor and C.J.Tudor’. Held at Stockton Central Library on Wednesday 12th June, C.J Tudor’s debut novel ‘The Chalk Man’ was a Sunday Times bestseller and for me is one of the most sinister, gripping and original thrillers of recent years.
The festival has its own poet in residence, Lisette Auton, an award-winning spoken word performer and creative practitioner whose work focusses on disability, mental health and politics. She will use her experiences during the course of the festival to write new material to be published at the end of the two-week event.
A real highlight to end the proceedings is a performance by Middlesbrough’s legendary Electric Kool-Aid Cabaret on the evening of Saturday 22nd June at Middlesbrough Central Library. Well-established spoken word and musical cabaret performers Bob Beagrie and Andy Willoughby perform poetry in a fast-moving variety format and are joined onstage by Teesside Poetry Connection poets and local singer-songwriters.
To accompany these events there is a short story competition with cash prizes available and the chance to be published in an anthology created by the festival organisers.
The festival runs from Saturday 8th to Wednesday 22nd June. There are so many events packed into the two-week duration that it is impossible to cover them all here, but the full listings and links to tickets can be found at crossingthetees.org.
