Welcome to
our Festival
16-24 October 2026
Set up in 1992 to celebrate the written word
Tickets now on sale
2026 Speakers
Our 2026 Sponsors
Principal Festival Sponsor
2026 Brochure
Following a visit from A.F. Harrold:
“It was an enriching session that enhanced our pupils’ appreciation and understanding of poetry. Huge thanks to the Education Team at The Wells Festival of Literature for organising and funding this visit!”
Fairlands Middle School – Cheddar
Education projects
Wells Festival of Literature
Wells Festival of Literature is a registered charity entirely run by a committee of volunteers, funded by ticket sales, competition entries and generous local sponsors and Friends.
IN 2025
VISITORS A YEAR
News
-
A strange journey into history
Sophy Roberts, a speaker at this year’s Festival, is on the shortlist of the 2025 Wainwright prize for conservation writing for her latest book A Training School for Elephants. Following in the footsteps of four elephants shipped from India to the East African coast in 1879, she explores colonial greed and human-animal relationships through both…
-
Festival supports Wells Ecoweek
Health, climate change and conservation are all hot topics, and not only is the Festival hosting three speakers on relevant subjects this year, but it is pleased to support Wells Ecoweek. This is an event organised by the Wells Environment Network to raise awareness in the city of the need to protect and conserve our…
-
Congratulations to Booker Prize nominee
Award-winning novelist Andrew Miller’s latest book The Land in Winter has been longlisted for the Booker Prize 2025 and has also won the 2025 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. The Somerset-based author, who is an Associate of Wells Festival of Literature, appeared at the 2022 Festival where he spoke of his then new novel…
-
Friends Event Success!
Remnants of woolly rhinos, hyenas, bears, wolves, aurochs and other species long extinct in the UK are among the fossilised remains found in a small cave high up on Ebbor Gorge, near Wells. Professor Danielle Schreve, a leading palaeontologist at the University of Bristol, revealed the extent of the finds at a fascinating talk for…
