Ipswich’s first book festival aims to help local businesses

A town’s first ever book festival is aiming to help introduce visitors to independent businesses.

Four local business owners came up with the Ipswich Book Festival which takes place from 3 to 5 October in the town.

One of them, gift shop owner Cathy Frost, said: “We love Ipswich, we have some amazing venues and we wanted to move people around the town to visit places.

“Hence [we have got] 14 venues over 40 events; we’ve gone big.”

Ms Frost said the four had been considering the idea of a book festival “for some time” and decided to go ahead with it about a year ago.

Throughout the festival there will be talks from authors including from Gavin and Stacey actor Larry Lamb.

“He’s talking about dipping his toe into fiction. He has written his first fiction novel, and amongst other things he will be talking about his life in TV and film,” Ms Frost said of Lamb.

“He’s great and very entertaining, he has lots of stories.”

Other local authors have been invited and there will be book signings, meet the authors, workshops, classes, as well as children and family activities.

“We really hope that if this lands well, and I’m sure it will, then we can do some really good stuff within the community,” Ms Frost continued.

“It isn’t always about reading, it could be about writing, poetry, it’s limitless almost.”