Hello there and hope you’ve survived this hot week if you’re UK-based. We can’t cope with the heat over here, can we?

It’s Glastonbury this weekend so it feels very appropriate to be talking about festivals right now. Except this is a different kind of festival…

Tickets went on sale today for the Richmond Walking & Book Festival and I’m a speaker. Yay! I was so excited when I contacted the festival organisers earlier this year to see whether they might be interested and they came back saying they’d nearly finalised their programme but there was a slot available if I wanted it. I certainly did!

Richmond – the one in North Yorkshire rather than the London one – is a very special place to me because I opened and ran a teddy bear shop there between 2003-2005. I started learning my craft and writing my debut novel during quiet days in the shop. And there were LOTS of those, especially in the winter… or if it rained… or if it was really warm… or if it was a Wednesday… I think you get the picture!

The details are:

• Monday 19th September 2022
• 11am-12noon
• The Station, Richmond
• Cost: £8 (with concessions for those in full-time education or on income assessment benefits, and accompanying carers)

You can buy tickets here.

The festival runs from 16th-25th September and there are loads of amazing walking events to suit all abilities and some fabulous guest speakers talking about fiction and non-fiction works. You can view the full programme here. Do scroll through all three pages to see the full range of what’s on offer.

If you’d like to know more about the origins of this festival, the website home page is here.

Thank you so much to James Gravenor, Judith Clark and the committee for welcoming me onto the programme and to author Marrisse Whittaker for suggesting I make contact in the first place. Marrisse is speaking on the final day of the festival and her talk sounds fascinating.

I’m really nervous now – not about speaking but about not selling any tickets so praying there will be people interested!

Please spread the word, particularly if you have friends or family in the Richmond/Yorkshire Dales area or even further afield who’d make a day of it/a long weekend of it or even go for the duration of the festival.

Big hugs
Jessica xx