Returning in 2022 (29 September – 2 October), Marlborough LitFest is delighted to announce its headline Golding Speaker as literary icon and novelist Ali Smith. Smith will be appearing at LitFest on Friday 30 September at Marlborough Town Hall, to talk about her latest book, Companion Piece. The 2022 festival programme is currently being put together and confirmed authors and events will be released over the coming months.
The award-winning Ali Smith has had a prolific career as the author of many works of fiction, including most recently her Man-Booker shortlisted Seasonal quartet of novels: Summer, Spring, Winter, Autumn. Her work has been shortlisted four times for the Man Booker Prize, twice shortlisted for the Orange Prize, shortlisted for the Orwell Prize, as well as winning the Baileys Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Costa Novel of the Year Award.
Ali Smith’s new novel, Companion Piece, is a celebration of companionship in all its timeless and contemporary, legendary and unpindownable, spellbinding and shapeshifting forms… It follows the unique achievement of her Seasonal cycle of novels – Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer – written and published in as close as possible to real time, between 2016 and 2020, absorbing and refracting the times we are living through: the ‘state-of-the-nation novels which understand that the nation is you, is me, is all of us’ (New Statesman). According to the Observer, ‘Ali Smith is lighting us a path out of the nightmarish now.’
Marlborough LitFest hosts an annual Golding Speaker to highlight the town’s long connection with the Nobel Laureate and Booker Prize winner, William Golding, at an event sponsored by the William Golding estate. Past Golding Speakers include Elif Shafak, Ben Okri, Rose Tremain, Will Self, Lionel Shriver, Louis de Bernieres, Fay Weldon and Howard Jacobson.
The estate of William Golding has been involved with the festival since 2012. Judy Carver, daughter of William Golding, said: “It’s very welcome news that Ali Smith has agreed to be the Golding Speaker for 2022’s Marlborough LitFest. An inventive, fresh, funny and profound writer – adept at producing the unexpected. An absolute treat.”
This year’s festival will feature a varied programme of events for all ages including fiction, non-fiction, poetry and the annual Big Town Read. The festival aims to champion new, upcoming writers as well as established names and also encourage a love of reading in children and young people with author talks, competitions and our ongoing community outreach programme. The full programme will be available in the summer. Please sign up for our monthly newsletter or to go on the LitFest brochure mailing list: general@marlboroughlitfest.org
LitFest would like to thank its sponsors for 2021: lead sponsor Sarah Raven, livestream sponsor Hiscox Insurance, and event sponsors William Golding Limited, Marlborough College, St Francis School, Marlborough.news, Adam Matthew, as well as our patron Sir Simon Russell Beale, Hamilton Trust, Katharine House Gallery, The Arts Society Kennet & Swindon, Haine and Smith, The White Horse Bookshop and Wiltshire Life for their continued support for the festival.