Morpeth Book Festival History and its year on year growth
The idea of a Morpeth Book Festival evolve after few years of Morpeth Librarian Sarah Jayne and I organizing Author Evenings at the Morpeth Library. So in 2022 the first book festival in Morpeth was established and held on the 8th April at Please to Meet You, the Morpeth Library and the Morpeth Chantry.
The first book festival was held in 2022 with an impressive list of authors. Mari Hanna, Anne Cleeves, Trevor Wood and Barbara Fox to name a few. Based on audience feedback and the reports from the authors we decided to have a book festival in 2023. Unfortunately, we had to cancel the book festival at the last minute due to the announcement of a rail strike which prevented several of our key authors from attending.
The 2024 book festival raised us to a new level with award winning authors such as Mari Hannah, Alistair Moffat, M. W. Craven, and Dan Jacson. Attendance increased to 600 for the 2024 book festival.
The 2025 book festival was our most successful ever with 800 people attending over the 2 day festival. The impressive line up included Gervase Phinn, our patron Mari Hannah, James Naughtie, Alistair Moffat and Chris Mullens.
The 2026 Morpeth Book Festival promises to be even better than the 2024 book festival with a lineup of Mari Hannah, Steph McGovern, Sally Magnuson, Alistair Moffat, Allan Johnson, Chris Mullens and our local historian Bridgett Gubbins.
Please find attached Morpeth Book Festival 2024 Post event report.
Here is the 2024 Leaflet for your perusal.
2025 Morpeth Book festival
Greater Morpeth Development Trust, in partnership with Northumberland Libraries, hosted the 3rd Morpeth Book Festival on Saturday 22nd & Sunday 23rd March 2025, its theme celebrated the transformative power of storytelling, exploring how words shape our world and connect us to one another. The festival was held at St Georges United Reformed Church and Morpeth Library, Gas House Lane, opened by our Patron, Mari Hannah.
If you would like to see which authors attended, please click on the following link: 2025 Festival – it was in fact a whole Weekend of Words. We are pleased to have had the opportunity to catch up with some of the authors attending the Festival, for example:
Here is the 2025 Programme Booklet for your perusal.
2026 Morpeth Book Festival
We are now planning for our 2026 Morpeth Book Festival – scheduled Saturday 21st March 2026 and Sunday 22nd March 2026, further updates will be available on 28th October 2025. When 2026 tickets are available they will be on sale from the Chantry, Morpeth TIC and through TicketSource