In association with Kent Review and The School of English Literary Festival, 14 June 15.00-17.00. Open to students, staff and the general public. 

Calling all writers, poets, literary enthusiasts, wordsmiths, and those of you yet to make up your minds!

To mark the production of its fourth edition, the Kent Review is hosting a fund-raising Marathon of Reading as part of the upcoming School of English Literary Festival. We’re looking for enthusiastic readers to perform their work as part of a continuous flow, linking each participant to those who went before and those to come after. The theme of this event is ‘Bridges and Journeys’.

Required: poetry, prose, and any other spoken word forms to be performed in 5-7 minute slots. Your piece can be new work written for the occasion, or previous writing edited to fit the brief (more details below).

The Literary Festival is a programme of events by the School of English on June 13- 14 June, offering workshops, speakers, taster sessions, discussions and much more. The Marathon will take place 15.00-17.00, on 13 June at the Gulbenkian café stage. The event will be both live-streamed and recorded. Being part of the festival is a great opportunity for your work to be heard by broader audiences – both as your own and as part of the collective project.

Please get in touch to express interest with a short proposal of what you’d like to read. As this is a collaborative event, participants will then be given two specific words with which to begin and end their pieces; serving as a bridge between each reader. Going forward, we would also like a copy of each piece performed to create a display of work that will remain in the School of English for posterity.

Note: as this is a fundraiser, participants would be expected to make a donation (recommended: £5) to the Kent Review Fund – but you do not need to be included in the Review to take part in this event.

The Kent Review is an industry-standard anthology of MA and PhD creative writing from the University of Kent, published every other year. As in previous years, volume IV aims to showcase the very best writers Kent has to offer; to maintain the publication’s high standards, this fundraiser is in aid of printing costs.

Send thoughts on proposed reading, questions or concerns to the Kent Review team at e.dee@kent.ac.uk, or sep37@kent.ac.uk.

Looking forward to hearing from you!