Clapham Book Festival 2018 took place on Saturday 12th May 2018 and included something for everyone, including poetry, crime writing, writing for young adults, historians and biographers and two internationally recognised literary figures. Oh and a session for local would-be writers on How to Get Published.
The Festival started at Clapham Library with award-winning YA author, Patrice Lawrence, talking about her novels, It All Began With Orange Boy and Indigo Doughnut, with local school children.
At the Omnibus Theatre local author Emma Darwin (Get Started in Writing Historical Fiction, The Mathematics of Love ) and Philip Gwyn-Jones, Editor at large at Scribe UK, discussed The Writing Game, an insider’s guide to how to get published. This was followed by Word Force a poetry session with Radio 4’s Daljit Nagra, Pimlico poet Cecilia Knapp and local poet and writer Michael Glover.
In the afternoon in Crime Land critic and author (The Deaths, The Allegations) Mark 
Lawson discussed crime writing, place and motivation with Inspector Chopra creator and Director of the Department of Security and Crime Science at UCL, Vaseem Khan in a wide-ranging session covering the impact of social media ad the #Metoo movement on the due process of law. Then Dame Margaret Drabble was in conversation with ex-Claphamite and writer Natasha Cooper, discussing her writing life 
and her latest book The Dark Flood Rises.
WWII historian and BAFTA-winning Clapham writer, Simon Berthon ( Warlords, A Secret Worth Killing For ) headed a panel discussion with acclaimed biographer and Clapham resident Henry Hemmings, author of ‘M’ a biography of the head of MI5, and Clare Mulley, author of The Women Who Flew for Hitler and a former resident of Clapham.
The evening session was lead by Deborah Moggach OBE, author and internationally renowned screenwriter – The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Pride and Prejudice – introduced by Clapham writer and 
best-selling novelist Elizabeth Buchan.
The Festival ended with a Meet & Greet event for local authors, many of whom attended, with live music in The Greene Room.
Clapham Book Festival, organised by Clapham Writers, in partnership with Omnibus, Clapham’s prize-winning arts centre, Clapham Books, Clapham’s independent book shop and Clapham Library, housed in the award-winning Mary Seacole House and sponsored by This is Clapham.
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