News

Cuckfield Bookfest is already shaping up to be a great year. Discover the latest updates on who will be joining us at this wonderful literary event!

Children’s Bookfest 2024

We have some really exciting children’s authors who will be joining us on the stage this year! The wonderful Chris Bradford brings gripping space adventures, ideal for young action fans and budding astronauts aged 5-9.

And Sarah Crossan, the award-winning author of children’s and teen books brings her engaging and exhilarating stories to the festival with her new book Where the Heart Should Be, revisiting the time of the Great Hunger in Ireland.

To top all that, we also have Adam Kay, accompanied by illustrator Henry Paker with his first children’s book Dexter Procter, the world’s youngest doctor!”

Creative Writing Competition 2024 – celebrating World Space Week

Calling all children 7-13 year olds

As this year’s festival falls in ‘World Space Week’ we invite you to submit a piece of creative writing (max 500 words) on the theme of SPACE AND EXPLORATION. Scan and email your work with your name, school, year group, and contact details to cuckfieldbookfest@outlook.com.

Entries should be written in English, deadline 24th September.

Please ensure you have a parent’s or guardian’s permission to send these details. Any personal information we collect will be used in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulations 2018. Teachers can contact us to arrange multiple entries.

Dominic Holland is perhaps best known as a comedian but he has written several books including a series of comic essays, Takes on Life, which cover his life and yours, teasing out the idiosyncrasies which plague us all. His latest novel Open Links is rooted in golf.

Who doesn’t love Abba? It’s 50 years since they won the Eurovision Song Contest. Giles Smith, writer and music fan sets out to find out why the group has remained bigger than ever. It’s his way of saying ‘thank you for the music’. The Spectator said ‘at last a book that’s worthy of Abba’.

For over two decades, Lara Maiklem has scoured the banks of the Thames to find objects – lost or discarded – that tell the greatest stories. In A Mudlarking Year, she reflects on a year of her life searching the foreshore of the Thames.

Lara will be in conversation with Helen Chandler-Wilde who in Lost & Found, offers nine life-changing lessons from someone who lost everything.

Big Book Group 2024

We have chosen the book for the Big Book Group – the intriguingly named Confession with Blue Horses by Sophie Hardach.

Tobi and Ella’s childhood in East Berlin is shrouded in mystery. Now adults living in London, their past is full of unanswered questions. Both remember their family’s daring and terrifying attempt to escape. But what happened next? Where did their parents disappear to, and why? What happened to Heiko, their little brother? And was there ever a painting of three blue horses?

The Guardian called it ‘an absorbing slow burn of a book that not only casts light on Germany’s recent history but depicts, with careful tenderness, a family simultaneously torn apart by ideology and bound by powerful ties of love.’

Sophie Hardach is a German-born writer and journalist living in London.

Confession with Blue Horses was short-listed for the Costa prize. We hope that by announcing the title for the Big Book Group now, groups can incorporate it into their programme for the year.