The Northern Ireland Festival of Writing will be broadcasting over six hours of content throughout the day and night on NVTV this Friday, November 28.
Following on from the successful inaugural event in 2019 the festival has launched an online programme of content that will once again encourage and support writers who want to start or develop their skills.
Over the next 3 weeks the free online content will include interviews with local writers and content creators, panel events, workshops and masterclasses.
As well as that the festival will be broadcasting a series of interviews with local writers from a wide variety of writing genres on NVTV and across via a range of Facebook and YouTube channels.
Director of the festival, James Murphy, said that the festival intends to become even more successful in encouraging local talent.
“While we cannot repeat last year we have worked hard to make sure we have a rich programme that aims to help develop participant’s confidence,” he said.
“We hope that what we have planned will educate, empower and improve literacy and communications skills.”
The 2020 programme will include in-depth interviews with local, national and international writers; a range of practical writing and creative writing workshops, online book club and reading recommendations; panel discussions; and, an online writing retreat.
Photo: Grace Parry – Excalibur Press
Festival directors publicist and journalist Tina Calder and author James Murphy will be interviewing a range of well known Northern Ireland writers including comedians Tim McGarry and Nuala McKeever, musicians Janet Devlin and Ciaran McElhinney, performance poets Elizabeth McGeown and Michael Wilson, authors William Clegg and Bernie Allen, transformation coach Deborah King, journalist and author Malachi O’Doherty and journalist and blogger Alan Meban to name a few.
From Zoom to in-studio interviews Tina said they wanted to show the breadth of talent throughout Northern Ireland.
She added: “What we wanted to achieve with these interviews was to inspire other writers by hearing stories from those who have achieved a range of success in their chosen writing field. It was important to us that we were able to show that the writing industry was more than just writing novels and poetry.
“There are some really incredible stories of people’s journey to success and I love the fact that each person has a different one to tell.”
Local community television channel NVTV joined forces with the festival in order to make it more accessible to people across the country.
Simon Wood, Chairperson at NVTV said: “Northern Visions is excited to be a partner in the Northern Ireland Festival of Writing this year. One of the pleasures for many of us during these challenging times, especially during lockdown, has been being able to get lost in a book and become acquainted with books we have forgotten we actually own.
“What’s so interesting about the Festival of Writing is that it is writing in all its forms so this is a real voyage of discovery.”
Fans of the festival can see the main NVTV broadcast on Friday November 27 broadcasting on Freeview 7 (greater Belfast) and Virgin Media 159 (across Northern Ireland).
The festival will also be streaming sessions on Facebook and running a series of online workshop sessions as well as a range of other interactive events over the coming weeks.
“With the support of all including our festival partners NVTV, Oranga Creative, BAM magazine, The Secret Bookshelf and my own company Excalibur Press we will make this year’s festival a roaring success and look forward to having a further programme planned for the time when safer social gatherings can take place” said festival co-founder Tina Calder.
To help support the festival the Crowd Funder page can be found here: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/
To find out more at http://festivalofwriting.org