News & Features
A look back at 2026 so far...
By - 29 August 2026 - 11:30am
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Read along to discover what we've been up to in the first six months of 2026.
Derby Book Festival and Shared Reading have had an incredible start to 2026, from competitions to our Summer Festival, to podcasts and Shared Reading groups, there is so much to celebrate.
January
January was competition month with the announcement of our Longlist for the Derby Children's Picture Book Award and the launch of our annual 50-word Flash Fiction Writing Competition 2026, kindly sponsored by Derventio Education, with this year's theme, 'Hope'.
February
February marked our big World Book Day event at Derby Market Hall. The brilliant event saw over 5000 attendees join us for a fun-filled day of crafts, storytelling and a wide-range of stalls for children and families to enjoy. Read the news story here.
Shared Reading also had an excellent month as 'A Shared Reading Podcast' officially launched with hosts Ellie and Steve sharing the joy and connection our participants get from attending our Shared Reading groups, featuring guests Peter Little, a Shared Reading participant and Cullen Marshall, a local poet. Mickleover Library also celebrated the fourth anniversary of their Shared Reading group!
March
March was a busy month with competitions and tickets as priority bookings for our Festival Friend's opened for our Summer Festival!
We announced the winners of both the Children's Picture Book Award 2026 - 'That's Not Stella' by Donna Fredin and of our Flash Fiction Writing Competition. Read the winning poems here.
Shared Reading delivered a tailored volunteer training day for the brilliant WELLIES team!
Over time WELLIES participants have said that Shared Reading has helped them overcome anxieties about reading aloud and has boosted confidence to express themselves, whilst also feeling that listening to others has helped them create space for reflection. Read more about it here.
April
April saw our first ever World Book Night event as we celebrated the evening with a lovely evening of 'Silent Reading: Unplugged' at QUAD with attendees reading for an hour, followed by discussion and sharing news about our upcoming Summer Festival.
Our Summer Festival tickets officially went on sale with an incredible list of authors and children's events taking place in May, including novelists Joanna Cannon and Patrick Gale, Waterstones Book of the Year winner, Lucy Steeds at QUAD and an Introduction to Dungeons and Dragons Workshop.
Shared Reading had a very busy month as they filmed a couple of Shared Reading sessions to share with future attendees who may wonder what to expect at a session: you can watch the Spring and Travel sessions on Youtube.
The next Shared Reading podcast was also released as hosts Ellie and Steve were joined by local author and illustrator, Sam Warburton and our incredible volunteer, Lucy. Listen here.
May
May marks Summer Festival month!
An extremely busy month for the Festival team every year, but always incredible to look back on. We held 70 book-related events for all ages and interests in venues across the city from 21st - 31st May.
We were joined by so many amazing authors including Marcia Hutchinson at Waterstones, who was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2026 and won the Book of the Year Discover Award at The British Book Awards, with her novel ‘The Mercy Step’, Jo Hamilton spoke about her experience of The Post Office Scandal, Labour Minister Chris Bryant MP and former English cricketer Ashley Giles joined us at the Central Co-op County Ground. Our children's events including our much loved Bookworms event at Electric Daisy, the incredible Brothers Mcleod and acclaimed Manga artist Chie Kutsuwada.
We're also very happy to be working in partnership with the Society of Authors, Derby Libraries and Derbyshire Libraries to organise another series of Local Author talks at local libraries to showcase brilliant local authors, including Simon Michael and Sheralyn Pattison. Discover more here.
June
The chaotic month of May was over but June was just as busy as Vanessa, our Children and Young People's Co-ordinator, rallies our volunteers together to sort out the books donated to the Children's Book Appeal and to welcome school children and teachers to our annual Meet The Author event.
We were joined by the former Children's Laureate, Frank Cottrell Boyce and illustrator and author Joe Todd Stanton at Derby Theatre, very kindly sponsored by local educational supplier Cosy Foundation, saw children across Derby join us either in person or on a live stream as we heard from both authors about their books and the importance of reading. Read more about the event here.
Our Book Appeal received over 6000 books as Derby Book Festival and partners across Derby worked together to give children and schools books to share and make reading for pleasure more accessible in Derby. Partners including local businesses and arts venues hosted collection points for book donations, receiving books from members of the public, festival goers and employees.
The books were then collected from over 20 collection points by the amazing team at Enterprise and the Derby Book Festival Team. The books were delivered to the University of Derby where our wonderful volunteers sorted, them by ages, quality checked and packed them ready to be collected by 24 schools and projects from around Derby to bring joy to so many children.
Once the books are in their new homes, children can choose what they want to read across the city as part of school libraries, community libraries, free book stalls, gifts and prizes, putting books into the hands of the next generation of readers.
Since 2023, we have distributed 22,000 books thanks to your donations. We are incredibly grateful to all of the amazing partners who support this project.