Open Book Cape Town is an annual literary festival, the first of which is happening from the 21st to the 25th September 2011. When Mervyn Sloman and Ben Williams started talking about it, they had in mind around 60 literary events over 5 days featuring about 15 top international as well as some of the best South Africans writing today. Due to the incredible support Open Book has received, that has now grown into a festival with close to 150 events, featuring almost 100 authors.
There are three major elements to the Open Book vision.
Events we are planning speak to all three goals. The core programme of the festival includes events that feature both international and local authors, and we are doing events in selected schools as well as starting long term projects inspired by our vision. For more information, please visit the projects page.
Events will run in several locations in Cape Town's 'Fringe' district. The Fugard Theatre is the hub and will be used extensively for events. Other venues include The District 6 Museum, The Homecoming Centre, the Townhouse Hotel (also our accommodation partner), The Slave Lodge, The Museum, The National Gallery, Central Library and Lobby Books.
Open Book has developed a number of partnerships to ensure the festival is of the highest standard. PEN (the international writers' organisation) got involved early on and will be bringing authors to Cape Town for a portion of programming called 'Free the Word'. On the youth side, we have a central partnership with Equal Education (which runs the One School, One Library, One Librarian campaign). For a complete list of our partners, please visit our sponsorship page.
A portion of our programme is live – more will be following in the next few weeks – and tickets will be available through Computicket.
We are all incredibly excited about the festival and hope to see you there!