Award-winning local author Rob Keeley will be signing copies of his books for children at Wallasey Village Library and Community Centre on Saturday 20 June from 12-4pm. Including advance copies of his new picture book, Arthur and the Land of Nimbostratus. Come along, meet Rob and get a free postcard! Suitable for children of all ages. In the community room. Wallasey Village Library and Community Centre, St George’s Road, Wallasey CH45 3NE
Liverpool Book Festival is returning with a Summer Special at BOXPARK in Liverpool this summer.The packed event will feature over 60 authors selling their books directly, artisan stalls, street food, talks, live music and a kids zone — with free entry for Under 12s.
Spanning various genres and featuring some incredible independent and bestselling authors, as well as some publishers, it’s an opportunity to meet them and buy their books directly. Some familiar faces will be selling their books, including:
Celebrity chef Dave Critchley
SAS hero Rusty Firmin
Comic book legends Tim Quinn & Kev Sutherland
Crime bestseller Conrad Jones
Lots of other local independent authors, festival debut authors and publishers
There will also be some incredible live music on the day featuring some of the region’s most talented artists. On the main stage, there’ll be beautiful acoustic live music followed by a DJ spinning Balearic beats — with live music on the outdoor terrace too! Music on the day includes:
Abbie Fairchild
Liz Owen
Aimee Lea Frances
DJ Laura Love
Nikhil Hathiwala
Oisin Hassan
JP Cumberlidge
Poet, writer and LJMU creative writing lecturer Helen Tookey discusses and reads from her new book Outward Bound from Liverpool: Reading Malcolm Lowry. Weaving together literary criticism, memoir and place-writing, the book takes the reader on an immersive journey through the landscapes – textual and geographical, remembered and reimagined – of Wirral-born novelist, poet and short-story writer Malcolm Lowry (1909–57).
At the same time, the book follows the author’s own evolving engagement with Lowry as she uses him to ‘think with’, turning his texts and her readings of them through unexpected angles, exploring questions of place and belonging, exile and home.
Moving through the various terrains of Lowry’s life and work – Liverpool and the Wirral; Dollarton in British Columbia, where he found his always-threatened idyll; the archive of his work; and the richly textured, symbolic landscapes of his writing itself – the book offers a compelling, lyrical and often moving account of a sustained engagement with a writer and what it can enable. Outward Bound from Liverpool also pays tribute to the humour, beauty and passion of Lowry’s writing, his deeply felt sense of place, and his prescient concern for the natural world. It explores how reading can change us and shows why Lowry is a writer still very much for today.
Helen will be in conversation with the Bluecoat’s Director of Cultural Legacies, Bryan Biggs, with whom she collaborates on the arts centre’s annual Lowry Lounge celebration of the writer.
“A generous and open-minded literary adventure. Thoroughly researched but never allowing the propulsive narrative to be held back. Helen Tookey wins our trust and delivers a brave sequence of approaches to an impossible and endlessly rewarding author” – Iain Sinclair
Outward Bound from Liverpool: Reading Malcolm Lowry is published by Liverpool University Press, August 2026
Free, booking required
The Windows ProjectWRITING ADVICE DESK
WEDNESDAY 3rd JUNE at Liverpool Central LibraryWilliam Brown Street L3 8EW
Drop in between 5.30pm and 7.00pmfor one-to-one appraisal of scripts, stories, poemsand details of publishing opportunities, performance venues, workshops and courses
with
ALISON DOWN Screenwriter and poetBAFTA Rocliffe’s Emerging Children’s Writer.
DAVID WARDAuthor and poetEditor ‘Smoke’ magazineNominated for Carnegie Medal
Please book in on arrival. Each individual session usually lasts 20 minutes.
SHARED READING in association with The Reader
Write to Thrive at the Unity Theatre
2pm & 7:30pm
This year, RAWD members have joined forces with guest artists Tip Tray Theatre. Across three months of radical research, 60 disabled members from RAWD from Liverpool, Ellesmere Port and Chester have been dismantling and rebuilding poetry to find their own unique language, rhythm and expressions.
From the rehearsal rooms of Unity, Theatre Porto and Storyhouse, three distinct companies will create new works born out of the Write to Thrive project.
RAWD are proudly Associate Company in Residence at Unity hosting weekly sessions that work towards theatre productions. We believe creativity is a powerful vehicle for independence, confidence and expression – art is for everyone.
This year RAWD is celebrating its 15th Birthday by raising £15,000. For more information on RAWD and how to support please visit rawdproject.co.uk
Join us for a special launch event celebrating Our Monstrous Bodies, the debut novel by Emma Cleary.
Cleary’s striking first novel blends queer literary fiction with horror, exploring fractured sisterhood, the uncanniness of the female body, and the seductiveness of art. Drawing on visual art and horror cinema, it delves into themes of loneliness, motherhood, and threatened bodily autonomy, offering a haunting and thought-provoking reading experience.
Originally from Liverpool, Emma Cleary is a writer and editor now based in Vancouver. Our Monstrous Bodies (published as Afterbirth in the US and Canada) is her debut novel. She holds a PhD in Literature from Staffordshire University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, and is editor-in-chief of Geist magazine.
The evening will be hosted by writer and director Julia Cranney, and will include readings, an in-conversation with the author, and an audience Q&A. The author will also sign copies of the novel, with book sales by Aldous Books.
This event will appeal to readers and thinkers interested in contemporary literature, queer writing, literary horror, visual culture, the feminine grotesque, and critical discussion.
Tickets:– General Admission: £5– Concession: £2
A limited number of free tickets are available for those who are unwaged or experiencing financial hardship. Please select this option if it applies to you.
Doors open at 5.30pm
Booking required
Join us for an evening of live poetry with James Byrne, Jesse Hill, Chris McCabe, and Robert Sheppard. Supported by Liverpool Poetry Space, this event brings together four distinctive voices, each presenting live readings of new and recent work in an intimate setting.
Tickets- General Admission: £5- Concession: £2
A limited number of free tickets are available for those who are unwaged or experiencing financial hardship. Please select this option if it applies to you.
Pariah Productions presents Jimmy Rose, written and directed by Tom Hall, produced for One Hour Theatre Company, by Victor Merriman.
Jimmy Rose is presented as a radio play in a theatrical setting, offering WoWFest audiences a unique collective listening experience.
At a tender age Herman Melville experienced a reversal of fortune upon the sudden death of his father, a man of apparently substantial means. The family was suddenly confronted with a mountain of debt and the ruin of all their immediate expectations. Perhaps this turn of fate prompted the many critiques of American capitalism which appear both as themes and traces in his body of work.
“Jimmy Rose”, draws on Melville’s short story of the same name, set in old New York before the Civil War, and foregrounding a glamorous bachelor plutocrat who has attained an Olympian stature in the city. Everybody knows Jimmy Rose, the great and the good seek to dine at his table, where he dispenses wit, bonhomie, and business advice.
Yet when quite literally his ship(s) fail to come in, this paragon of American success falls from that Paradise from whose heights he once projected ultimate authority and influence. It is an honour to present “Jimmy Rose” under WoWFEST 2026’s theme, New World Disorder, not least because of the origins of contemporary upheavals in a febrile world-financial system forged in nineteenth-century urban America. – Tom Hall, Dublin. May 2026
Jimmy Rose is Tom Hall’s fifth play for WoWFest, his Bartleby: A Tale of Wall Street featuring in the online festival (2021), Anything for a Laugh (2024), I Live Alone and My Own Free Voice (double bill, 2025). Tom was born in Vermont, USA, and has lived in Ireland since 1995, following periods in Mexico, where he began writing. Jimmy Rose develops the production values of previous plays, which featured solo performers, David Llewelyn (2021), Victor Merriman (2024 and 2025a), and Jane Hogarth (2025b), respectively. Tom assembled a cast of well-established Irish actors to record the play at Les Keye’s Arad Studios, Dublin. Brendan Conroy, who is known to Liverpool audiences for his lead role in Lizzie Nunnery’s Intemperance (Capital of Culture production, Everyman Theatre), plays Jimmy Rose.
Victor Merriman is Emeritus Professor in Drama at Edge Hill University, and a founder-director of One Hour Theatre Company.
Date: Tuesday 19th MayTime: 17.30 – 18.30 (doors open 5.15pm)Venue: Quaker Meeting House, School Lane, Liverpool (Beside Bluecoat Arts Centre)Tickets: £5
Sunday 4 October / 2.30pm–4.30pm / Open Eye Gallery / free / RSVP The EPF returns to Liverpool! A brilliant afternoon of live poetry will present some of the most exciting poets from Norway, Austria, Czechia and beyond, as pairs of poets present brand new works of live literature, made for the day. Drawing upon the local Liverpudlian poetry scene as well as visiting poets, and supported by the Liverpool Poetry Space, this will be a unique celebration of collaboration and literary performance. Featuring: Anna Luňáková, Thomas Ballhausen, Thor Magnus Tangeras, Endre Ruset, Michael Sutton, Tom Jenks and SJ Fowler, Elspeth Mclean, Lenni Sanders and many more poets to be announced… An event in partnership with Liverpool Poetry Space. Event curated by SJ Fowler with thanks to Chris McCabe.