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BARE LIT FESTIVAL: Ben Okri will deliver this year's keynote speech

LOOKING FOR something to do this Bank Holiday weekend? If you want to discover exciting works from writers of colour and explore themes around representation and inclusion in the publishing industry, you’ll want to head down to Bare Lit Festival.

The festival, which is returning to London for the fourth time, will open its doors at London’s Albany community space on May 4 and 5. It boasts an outstanding line-up of speakers and performers across a range of genres and is redefining what it means to be a literature festival.

Bare Lit has built a reputation of bringing together writers of all backgrounds to tackle hot topics and debates. You can expect a mix of artists from storytelling performers and playwrights, to groundbreaking poets, novelists and journalists with exciting fresh talent taking the stage alongside internationally-celebrated veterans.

Bare Lit prides itself on tackling political debates, as well as contemporary movements within arts and culture.

This year the festival is introducing a new element to its programme, Lit Kids.

Created especially for under-13s, it will include a comic-drawing workshop by Erin Aniker, storytelling singing with Nadine Wilder Palmer, reading and animation with Nadia Shireen and a talk on the importance of kindness and activism from Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu.

With writers from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds underrepresented at traditional literary festivals, Bare Lit was established to combat this and provide a space for their work to be celebrated.

Sharmaine Lovegrove and Nick Davies, representatives of festival sponsor for 2019 Hachette UK said: “We are delighted to sponsor Bare Lit festival for the second year. The festival’s amplification of vital voices with an eclectic and accessible range of events for the BAME communities of readers and writers is a brilliant, positive way for people to be seen and heard.”

For more information and to purchase tickets, click here.

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