SHEFFIELD'S annual celebration of writing and reading, the Off the Shelf festival, gets under way on Saturday with the first of more than 200 events including readings, workshops, walks, talks, exhibitions and competitions and Readers Day.
As usual it offers an exciting programme of events for children and young people.
To get people into the reading mood, this weekend sees a giant BookSwap in the Winter Garden. Visitors can also meet a couple of authors. On Saturday it's Harriet Gr
ace, who will be reading from her new novel, Cells, which she started while on the Creative Writing MA course at Sheffield Hallam University under the guidance of Jane Rogers.
The novel's triangle of love, sex and betrayal centres on the issue of infertility and its effect on one career woman, her husband and others around her. On Sunday it will be the turn of first-time Sheffield novelist Rachel Ingrams.
Cutting edge communications technology will be showcased at the festival. Media students will master near field communication-equipped mobile telephones and microchipped posters and send text messages as part of an innovative storytelling project. The Five Trees Forest runs from Monday to October 25 at Norton College and uses folklore and children's stories to involve people in interactive story telling.
Among the personalities coming to Sheffield next week is Tom Priestley, son of one of the giants of 20th century British culture, along with Neil Hanson, author of Priestley's Wars.
It is the untold story of J B Priestley's role at the centre of British 20th century history – a unique insight into the two world wars and the foundation of the CND movement through the eyes of one of the greatest writer containing previously unpublished letters from the First World War battlefields and the Postscripts radio broadcasts that Churchill tried to ban.
They will be talking about the book at the Showroom on Sunday at 5pm, followed by a screening of The Foreman went to France, a 1942 film starring Tommy Trinder based on a JB Priestley story.
The first week also includes appearances by American David Guterson, newsmen John Pilger and Jeremy Bowen and Dave Simpson talking about his book on the band The Fall.
Sheila Hancock provided a rousing curtain-raiser on Wednesday, telling the capacity Lyceum audience of her love for the Crucible and its late director Clare Venables. The actress had a surprise herself during the evening when her neice, who has just enrolled for a PHD as part of the British Library Theatre Programme at the University of Sheffield, turned up unexpectedly to see her.
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