Stoke Newington Literary Festival

07/06/2024

Matthew Worley: Xerox Machine at The Mildmay Club Upstairs Room, 33-34 Newington Green, London, N16 9PR Tickets and Information

05/06/2024

Only two sleeps to go! Do remember that it's not JUST our fabulous and ridiculously cheap events that are happening around Newington Green this weekend. Take the opportunity between events to visit some of the incredible independent cafes, shops, bars & restaurants in the area too. We've got Belle Epoque's amazing patisserie, the wonderful Lizzie's on the Green, Jolene, Cadet, Perilla, Yield Wines (and eats), cheese toasties and wine from Jumi, some incredible Turkish restaurants just up Green Lanes as well as the culinary and retail delights of Stoke Newington Church Street just up the road. The weather looks temperate and dry (it was too much to hope for summer, let's face it) so grab yourself a picnic and sit on the Green under the watchful eye of silver Barbie blob. Sorry, we mean the statue of Mary Wollstonecraft ;-)

05/06/2024

With just TWO DAYS to go until what the cool cats at The Quietus called 'One of the best book bashes in the UK', we urge you to get a wiggle on and bag some brain-expanding events at BARGAIN prices. For the price of a mochalochafrappucino or a fairly ropey glass of house wine, you could be soaking up knowledge about anything from how sport helped shape Britain, toxic beauty culture to zines & the counter-culture, why we dance and why you really do need to put Arthur Russell on your Spotify list, to why it's important to create protest writing. For evening fun at ridiculously good prices, we've got Stewart Lee's favourite story-teller John Osborne spinning a wonderful tale about Strangers, our fabulous Q***r Literary Soirée under a glitterball and the insanely brilliant Nerd Nite where you can learn about powerpoint presentations, why ADHD isn't a bloody trend thank you very much and beach huts. Lots of events have sold out but there are still tickets left, so don't be left out. Be part of the brainy crowd! Tickets in the link.

04/06/2024

SOLD OUT: Sami Kent on Turkey, Jocelyn Fiske on Roxy Music, The Secret Tory & Caitlin Moran, John Crace, Paloma Faith, Hackney Stories & several others close to selling out.

22/05/2024

So the programme is live! We’re inevitably still doing some tinkering but tickets for Paloma Faith, The Secret Tory & Caitlin Moran, Doon Mackichan, John Crace, Andy Becket, Dermot Murnaghan & David Horspool, Andi Oliver-hosted Gala Night, the insanely popular Juke Box Fury (with Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore & Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ Helen O’Hara) and Nerd Nite, a glitterballtastic return of our Q***r Literary Salon, David Stubbs on the history of British Comedy, History of Stokey, Prof Matthew Worley on zines & counter-culture, Max Decharné on Teddy Boys, Natasha & Walter & Catherine Taylor on Protest Writing. Sheela Bannerjee & Lucy Fulford on immigration, Empire & race, a beer & music matching, Moll Flanders walking tour and so much more. Tickets are selling fast so gather some friends and plan a fabulous festival weekend over 7-9th June!

07/05/2024

We're just about to put Earlybird weekend tickets on sale for our priority mailing list. Individual tickets and the full programme will be available soon. Make sure you've got the 7th-9th June in your diaries - it's going to be fun!

19/04/2024

The 2024 programme’s shaping up to be another belter, so mark out 7-9 June in your diaries & get a group of mates to commit to some brain-tingling fun in one of the most historically interesting parts of London!

02/06/2023

It's festival time! Several things sold out but tickets still available for entertaining / fascinating / inspiring / all 3 talks from just £4: Why working men's clubs and gentlemen's clubs define class and politics, the super-whizzy Nerd Nite, why literature and maths are closer relations than you'd think, a q***r poetry soireé par excellence and a future classic novel written in Polari that's been 10 years in the making. And our literary quiz on Sunday is a bonkers £3 - grab some friends, pit your wits against our quizmaster. There's even a trophy. And TONIGHT we have a FREE DISCO at the iconic Mildmay Club to kick the weekend off, so come and swing your pants. All tickets available via our website or at our box office at the Mildmay Club over festival weekend. We're looking forward to seeing you!

31/05/2023

The festival wouldn’t be the festival without our very good friend & co-conspirator Richard Boon. if you don’t know who he is, that’s what Google is for. Basically we wouldn’t have indie music without him but he’s far too modest to say that. As well as his slightly anarchic Juke Box Fury event (almost sold out), he’s the Hackney Libraries festival coordinator, part of the promo team and a wise and well-connected programming collaborator. Here, with our Picador books-supported programme. If you see him over Festival weekend do say hello. He’s friendlier than he looks in this photo 😍

26/05/2023

With just a week to go, tickets are selling fast - James Brown & Irvine Welsh, Rob Delaney, Mudlark'd, And Other Stories events already SOLD OUT. We'll be at the farmers' market in Stoke Newington handing out programmes tomorrow - they're already available at StokeyBookShop, Hackney Libraries and in all discerning retailers, cafes and bars in the area. Grab yourself a copy and hurry along to our website to make sure you don't miss out on all the fun of festival weekend!

19/05/2023

Tickets are already selling fast, with weekend tickets sold out and several other events very close.

18/05/2023

Our 2023 programme is LIVE! Ignore the dates at the top of the page- we have a gremlin - but get your tickets before they’re snapped up.

Year ten of this eclectic, amusing, inspiring, sometimes audacious and always brilliant festival, set up to celebrate the area's radical thinking and literary heritage.

08/03/2023

Save the date! We're back 2-4 June 2023 and the programme's shaping up to be another belter.

19/08/2022

Another full house at the fabulous for ’s legendary Beer & Music Matching event. The festival has singularly the best beer & cider selection - all from Welsh producers - in the UK and it’s Pete’s job to match them with some of the acts playing. This year .

Thanks to and her fantastic crew for top notch event wrangling too.

09/07/2022

We don’t think it’s often that a festival gets its own recipe but family member has come up trumps. 2019’s after-party chilli was a thing of wonder. We don’t remember that poet’s name either but it was peak party-poet. Got wankered, tried to fight everyone, fell over, kicked a bin.

That aside, it’s such a great book - part-memoir, part-love letter to Stoke Newington (and Hackney, Moscow, Ireland, France…). Signed copies available now!

13/06/2022

IT’S A WRAP! Our incredible journey up the A10 has taken 15 days and we finally reached King’s Lynn with the utterly brilliant Juliet Jacques today. We talked football mascots, post-punk, politics, cats and marvelled at how beautiful the historic parts of King’s Lynn are.

12/06/2022

Today’s filming is a wrap and yes indeed those are crisps in my service station sandwich. Apparently there are vegetables waiting for me when I get back from Downham Market.

12/06/2022

Today is the penultimate day of our ambitious and exciting project. It started on 30 May with .cin setting off from Monument. Yesterday travelled through dystopian onion fields on his walk from Ely to Littleport which had this lovely tribute to Ukraine. Today will follow the A10 along the banks of the Great Ouse to Downham Market.