Fiction is special. It has the power to entertain, to shock, to thrill, to take us away from the every day into the world of the imagination.
We’ve always celebrated fiction in all its wonders and forms at Monty Lit Fest and 2024 is no exception.
Here are just three highlights to look forward to.
Award-winning author Tim Pears is an undoubted master of his craft. His latest book, Run to the Western Shore, takes us to Britain in AD 72, where a young Roman slave and the hostaged daughter of a Celtic tribal leader’s daughter flee across the country to the western shore.
Tim will be with us on Saturday 8th June at 10.00am to tell us why he has chosen Wales to tell a story that immerses us in lost landscapes, ancestries under threat and love at a time of conflict and change.
Siân Hughes grew up in a small village in Cheshire, and every day she used to cycle past an old house that was to become the setting for her extraordinary debut novel, Pearl.
Pearl tells the story of Marianne, eight years old when her mother goes missing and left behind with her baby brother and grieving father in that ramshackle house on the edge of a small village. She clings to the fragmented memories of her mother’s love and trusts in a medieval poem called Pearl to console her, but remains haunted by an unmarked gravestone in an abandoned chapel and the tidal pull of the river.
Meet Siân on Sunday 9th June at 11.00am as we explore how the medieval poem, Pearl, and her childhood village became the inspiration for such a wonderful evocation of late 20th-century rural life and the isolation and trauma of loss and grief.
If crime fiction is more your thing, we’re delighted to announce a last-minute addition to our programme: the chance to hear from top crime and thriller writer, Chris Lloyd.
Chris’s writing combines thrilling plotlines, fascinating characters and hugely evocative settings, whether he’s taking us to current-day Catalonia with his police procedural Elisenda Domènech series or immersing us in Nazi-Occupied Paris during World War II with his Eddie Giral thrillers.
Hear from Chris on Saturday 8th June at 11.00am as he tells us about his writing life, as well as giving us a sneak peak into the upcoming third Eddie Giral book, Banquet of Beggars.
Tickets are available online, or in person at The Montgomery Bookshop or Ivy House Café in Montgomery.