Headingley LitFest

19/03/2025

Go to our blog to read about Malika Booker at Brudenell Primary School recently. https://headingleylitfest.blogspot.com/

04/03/2025

Our two 'resident' poets - Malika Booker and James Nash - have been really successful recently in a number of local primary schools, teaching and encouraging pupils to write poems and perform them to audiences. You can read about all their sessions in depth on our blog. Here is a recent photo of Malika with Year 5 class teacher Victoria Williams at Little London Academy. https://headingleylitfest.blogspot.com/

22/02/2025

22/02/2025

Catch up with what we are doing in Leeds primary schools by reading the blog at

This blog is for reviews and comments on Headingley LitFest events. We would love to hear from you even if you are far away and can't come to any!

03/12/2024

Read about our most recent poetry event in local schools - this one with James Nash -

This blog is for reviews and comments on Headingley LitFest events. We would love to hear from you even if you are far away and can't come to any!

21/03/2024

Malika Booker was at Brudenell Primary School last week as part of our Poetry in Schools project (see our blog) and is now in Lagos, Nigeria, invited by Wole Soyinka.
https://thearthubng.com/lasisi-osagie-owi-mahogany-booker-to-slam-at-world-poetry-day-2024/?fbclid=IwAR0_4UV3oFQPVDBjrsCd4kCe1IqkepUnODDrLtT1gu4gm7LZV_NeviJBzpM

By Editor A combination of local and international poets will perform at this year's World Poetry Day 2024 scheduled for Thursday, March 21, 2024 at the Banquet

27/02/2024

Very impressed by this poem. It was used as a stimulus a few years ago at Brudenell Primary School by Malika Booker, who was working with a Year 5 (age 9/10) class, and she used it again this morning in a session with another Year 5 class at Little London Primary School as part of the preparatory writing for a grand finale poetry reading for parents and other classes this Friday in the main hall. It's going really well. The theme is the hands of someone you love dearly. Plenty of mothers of course, and also fathers, baby brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts. Malika will come in an hour before Friday's performance to make sure everyone (groups and individuals) performs loudly and clearly. It's all part of the LitFest's poetry in primary schools scheme.

26/02/2024

Reminder! Brush it up this coming Saturday.

06/02/2024

Special Event!

Book of the Bard: Exploring Shakespeare’s First Folio
2pm Saturday 2 March
HEART Centre, Bennett Road, LS6 3AW

Tickets £8 on the door (card or cash) or in advance from HEART.

Distinguished Shakespeare scholar Professor Emma Smith is coming to Leeds to talk about the very first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays – probably the most influential secular book ever printed.
Learn about the tumultuous origins of what has become one of the most valuable printed books in the world and hear about what happened to copies of the First Folio after it appeared in 1623. Some show how the plays were received in different theatres, others contain doodles and even children’s drawings. Its changing value can be traced as books were rebound and sold for higher prices.
Copies formerly owned by aristocrats were bought up by factory owners, including the Gott family from Leeds. English libraries were broken up and sold to wealthy Americans - and in some cases, as with the copy in the Brotherton Library at the University of Leeds, came back again!

Emma Smith was born and brought up in Leeds. She is Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, Oxford, and the 2023 Sam Wanamaker Fellow at Shakespeare’s Globe. Her books include The Making of Shakespeare’s First Folio and Shakespeare’s First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book, both with second editions published for the anniversary in 2023. Her This Is Shakespeare was a Sunday Times bestseller. She has broadcast extensively about Shakespeare on BBC radio and television.

12/01/2024

A big day for Shire Oak Primary School in Headingley! Read about what happened at headingleylitfest.blogspot.com

30/11/2023

Congratulations again for Malika Booker, twice Forward Prize winner. This recent interview with her about winning poem Libation is in The London Magazine:
https://thelondonmagazine.org/interview-libations-legacy-malika-booker-on-her-forward-prize-win/?fbclid=IwAR0xjPb9mY84VJ5JOXigjcswSW63aYKU9kBD1bksVB1hFso7fW4w6VfoSoY

Jamie Cameron Libation’s legacy: Malika Booker on her Forward Prize win . Malika Booker won the 2023 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem – Written, for ‘Libation’   Congratulations Malika on winning the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem for the second time! How did it feel to win? Has the e...

25/09/2023

Sometimes described as Headingley's poet laureate, Linda Marshall is launching HEADINGLEY HULLABALOO on SATURDAY 4 NOVEMBER at HEART in Bennett Road, Leeds 6.

The book is a new collection of poems celebrating the delights and quirks of Headingley past and present. It will be in the Shire Oak Room, arranged café style. You are invited to arrive from 3pm, with the performance beginning at 3.30pm. It's free entry, but donations are welcome to pay for the room.

Performers are Maggie Mash and Jane Oakshott (from Trio Literati), with Peter Spafford providing music.