Lancaster Literature Festival: Litfest 2026

Lancaster’s annual Litfest returns with its focus squarely on the natural world.  The festival will explore the idea of The Rights of Nature’  What are they?  And why do they matter?  Join in this March to hear the voices and ideas that reveal why recognising the rights of rivers, birds, animals, fish and insects is more important now than ever.

This year’s poetry call-out for the Litfest digital poetry map invites poets to submit up to three poems on the theme of ‘The Rights of Nature’, while podcaster Annabel Ross invites young and old to send in their own 100-word written or recorded Messages from the Wild.  All poems and messages will be posted on one of the two digital maps, and some will be picked out to be read at the events on 15 and 21 March.

In the National Year of Reading, the Litfest focus is on pleasure and nature, with M.G. Leonard’s eco-thriller Twitch selected as this year’s Big Read Book.  Several hundred copies of Twitch will be offered free to Lancaster and Morecambe secondary schools to support under-resourced students.  There are three new Big Read schemes to suit different preferences: book groups, Reading Buddies, where youngsters and family or friends can team up to read the book together, and, of course, Flying Solo.  And there are great prizes to be won.

Alongside all of that, there is brilliant

F​​​​​fiction from nationally recognised novelists Alan Hollinghurst and Kit de Waal, through rising stars Joanna Kavenna and Lancaster University teacher Eoghan Walls, to new north-west fiction writers, including Nick Fragel, Lisa Nicholas, John Whitehead and Hank Williams poetry from Fiona Benson, Sarah Howe, Karen McCarthy Woolf and Polly Atkin memoir from the master of memoir himself, Blake Morrison.

History from this year’s Lancaster History Lecturer, Dan Hicks, on monuments and memory, to Anna Whitelock on the pivotal reign of James I and the rise of global Britain.

In short, from Imitating The Dog’s The War of the Worlds show at The Dukes, through writers’ workshops, children’s activities, five writers in residence, and two showings of Darren Andrews’ acclaimed film Starling: Iridescent Black, Litfest 2026 is going to be one of the best and busiest ever.

The festival ends with a panel on The Rights of Nature, chaired by Dr Karen Lloyd, with the Eden Project’s Juliet Rose, environmental lawyer Anna Tranter and authors Lee Schofield and Anna Levin. 

See website for full programme of events.