Calibre Audio launches new online book festival Calibre Conversations

• Inspiring interviews with acclaimed authors and insightful panel events on accessibility and representation
• Calibre Audio is a pioneering audiobook charity celebrating its 50th Anniversary and working towards an inclusive future where everyone has the right and the opportunity to read

Upcoming author interviews include:

Mat Osman (The Ghost Theatre)

The Magazine Girls (Authors of a new book on their journalistic experiences on popular magazines in 60s-80s)

Roger Moorhouse (Author and historian)

Lisa Jewell (None of This is True)

Jenny Ireland (Winner of PRH’s WriteNow competition)

Candy Gourlay (Bone Talk and Wild Song)

Philip Reeve (Mortal Engines)and Sarah McIntyre (Adventure Mice)

Joe Haddow (Art Is Everywhere)

Calibre Audio, the pioneering audiobook charity, is celebrating 50 years of making reading accessible to everyone.

Marking the occasion in a programme of celebratory interactive activities, Calibre Audio has launched Calibre Conversations, a new online book festival featuring acclaimed author interviews and panel discussions available now through the Calibre Audio website.

The Festival launches with a filmed interview with author and Suede musician Mat Osman. Mat will discuss his book, The Ghost Theatre, a wild and hallucinatory reimagining of Elizabethan London.

Later this month, The Magazine Girls will be sharing their fascinating experiences of working for popular magazines from the 1960s to the 1980s including Rave, Mirabelle, Valentine, Loving, Petticoat, and 19.

Famous names The Magazine Girls interviewed included David Bowie, David Cassidy, Marc Bolan, Elton John, The Who and Bob Marley, amongst others. The Magazine Girls went on to become high-profile fashion and beauty editors, PRs, stylists, features and showbiz writers, working on best-selling women’s magazines such as Woman’s Own, Woman, and Good Housekeeping, Hello! and national newspapers.

As part of Calibre Audio’s Children’s Festival in July, Children’s authors and illustrators will take to the online stage to speak about their work and offer insights into their creative processes. Authors include winner of PRH’s WriteNow competition Jenny Ireland whose book The First Move explores her own personal experiences by featuring a character who has arthritis.

Candy Gourlay who writes about the history of the Philippines and American invasion in late 1800, will speak about her books Bone Talk and Wild Song. Mortal Engines’ writer Philip Reeve will be joined by author and illustrator Sarah McIntyre to talk about their book series Adventure Mice.  Author, radio producer and podcast host, Joe Haddow will discuss his first book for children, Art Is Everywhere.

July will also see a panel event onaccessibility and representation in Children’s books with more details on this and in-person author panel event at the Library of Birmingham in October being released soon.

In August, author and historian Roger Moorhouse will talk about his work researching acclaimed books including The Forgers: The Forgotten Story of the Holocaust’s Most Audacious Rescue Operation.

Rounding up the online aspect of the Festival in September will be an interview with Lisa Jewell, author of debut novel Ralph’s Party, which she wrote after accepting a challenge from her friend to write three chapters of a novel in exchange for dinner at her favourite restaurant.

Novels such as Thirtynothing, After The Party, Then She Was Gone, The Family Upstairs, Invisible Girl and The Night She Disappeared followed along with her latest book None of This Is True.

Calibre Conversations is available now on the Calibre Audio website

Emma Scott, Director of Commissioning and Editorial has said: “Accessibility is at the heart of what we do at Calibre Audio. Our new Calibre Conversations Festival aims to reach as many people as possible and create new ways to discuss and interact with a brilliantly exciting array of writing talent and much loved authors.

“In a world that assumes everyone can read, Calibre Conversations is there for our members to provide an access point where other literary Festivals may prove a challenge to engage with.

“Alongside our Inclusive Voices, short story competition, we look forward to welcoming people to the Calibre Conversations Festival as part of our 50th anniversary celebrations.”

Calibre Audio has also recently launched ‘Inclusive Voices’, a new competition which encourages everyone to share original stories of 550 words or less that feature a character with a print disability.

Writers can enter a story or a poem written down or recorded as a video or voice message with prizes including the winning story recorded as an audiobook.

Entries close on 31 August and can be made through the Calibre Audio website here