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Literature

 

With Norwich named as England’s first UNESCO City of Literature and the city host to the National Centre for Writing, not to mention the University of East Anglia’s world-leading Creative Writing degree course, the East of England has long punched above its weight when it comes to the written word.

Intermittent Southwold resident George Orwell took his pen name from the Suffolk river, while Norwich-born best-selling fantasy writer Philip Pullman set much of his ‘His Dark Materials’ series in and around the region. More recently, Japanese writer Kazuo Ishiguro – an alumnus of the above-mentioned UEA course – topped off his bulging trophy cabinet with the 2017 Nobel Prize for literature.

The East celebrates its pride of place within the nation’s literary world with a series of year-round events, workshops and readings, including Spring’s UEA Literary Festival, June’s Felixstowe Book Festival and November’s Poetry in Aldeburgh Festival.