Eastbourne LitFest

Festival Director Jane Branson talks to award-winning author Tia Fisher about writing in verse, visual storytelling and the power of books to open up difficult conversations. 

It’s part two of our special podcast with our patron Dame Jacqueline Wilson. Festival Director Jane Branson and her daughter, Anna - lifelong Jacqueline fan - ask about Jacqueline’s books for older readers and what she’d like to win a prize for, apart from writing. They start with the question left hanging at the end of part one. Which books would Jacqueline like every child to own? 

In the first of two conversations recorded for the Eastbourne LitFest podcast, Dame Jacqueline Wilson sits down with Festival Director Jane Branson and lifelong fan Anna Branson to talk about a writing life that has now produced an average of two and a half books a year.She reflects on her post-war childhood in a house with few books, on the local library that fed her omnivorous reading, and on knowing at the age of six — much to her mother's astonishment the night before her tonsil operation — that she wanted to be a writer. She traces the chance newspaper advert that took her to Dundee at seventeen to work for DC Thomson, and the writing routine she still keeps today: mornings in pyjamas, another quiet hour before supper while her wife cooks.She lifts the lid just a little on her new book, Esme Pepper, due this autumn — another girl in care, but a very different girl from Tracy Beaker, and one whose story somehow involves garden gnomes. Answering questions sent in by local schoolchildren and Instagram followers, she explains why she writes about children at the edges of family life rather than the comfortable middle, which of her own characters she'd most like to live as, the one subject she long resisted writing about, and the classic she thinks is overdue a fresh retelling.Part two picks up with the question we leave hanging here: if she could give every child three books at birth, what would they be?

Welcome to "Desert Island Books".In this new format Eastbourne Literary Festival podcast episode, people are asked to share with us the 5 books that mean the most to them and why. This episode explores 5 books that mean the world to author and technologist, Charles Humble, including:"The Wind in the Willows" by Kenneth Grahame "Last Chance to See" by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine"The Passion" by Jeanette Winterson"Seven Brief Lessons on Physics" by Carlo Rovelli"Wolf Hall" by Hilary Mantel

For our new episode we are joined by the wonderful M.J. Buckman, local author of the award winning book “Bent is not Broken” and recently her second book, “Women of Note”.Some of the references from this show:"Save the Cat" by Blake Snyder"Bent is not Broken" by M J Buckman"Women of Note" by M J Buckman

For our latest episode we are joined by a local Eastbourne writer whose debut work, it’s not exaggeration to say, defies convention and reshapes genres. Ed Bingham is the author of Broadlake — an extraordinary novel written entirely in verse, where poetry and storytelling converge to unravel a haunting mystery from beyond the veil of death.Ed has also just published a picturebook especially for a younger audience called “The Kind Wasp” and is working on a new novel “The Five O’Clock Club” to be published in 2026.Some of the references from this show include:"Broadlake" by Ed Bingham"The Kind Wasp" by Ed Bingham"A Night at the Opera" by Queen"Telegraph Road" by Dire Straits