Thank you to all the performers and exhibitors at the Rugby Literary Festival 2026. Even with a steady storm (it managed to bend and rip the outside banner three times!) we still had good audiences and a lot of audience engagement. Thank you to Rugby Borough Council for providing funding for the town-wide and publicity. HUGE special thanks to Lindsay Woodward who poured so much imagination and sheer hard work into this event. Fingers crossed that we will see another Lit Fest in 2027.
Here is a name check of all the performers on the first two days here (the artist-led events).
FRIDAY: Charles Line, then a workshop and talk by GrasRuts zine crew Victoria Duffield-Harding and Evelynn Wenman.
SATURDAY: Zeki Aslan kicked off with strategies for writing epic fantasy novels, Steve Davies and others compared sketchbooks and looked at some great examples by Judy Haslam-Jones and Eric Gaskell. Faye Spencer brought along some puppetry examples and talked and how to make and use them, followed by a look at digital art with Nathan Gregg. For the final art we made flowers and learned about the eco-message behind Nutmeg from author Sally Morris and illusutrator Jennifer Pettifer.
Sunday was a day for the Cafe Writers group to take over. Lovely to have them here for this (they meet here every second Friday through the year).
