NOVELIST Ian McEwan will grace Stroud’s first ever book festival to showcase the town’s talented authors, poets and illustrators.

Top authors who will feature include Katie Fforde, Sue Limb, Hannah Shaw and John Dougherty – with more to be announced.

The Stroud Book Festival will be held as part of the celebrations to mark the 70th anniversary of Stroud Festival, a charity dedicated to promoting the arts within the district.

“With Stroud positively teeming with writers and illustrators, I felt it was time for the town to celebrate them with their own festival,” said Jamila Gavin, artistic director of the book festival and an author herself.

Stroud Festival organiser, Rick Vick, added: “Seeing Ian McEwan at a signing in the Stroud Bookshop and discovering he lived in the district, I suddenly realised that, with all the other authors living here, a book festival was do-able.”

Jamila, who is author of Coram Boy, and fellow children’s author Cindy Jefferies, best known for her series, Fame School, came up with a literary feast for both grown-ups and little ones.

Award-winning novelist and screenwriter McEwan will be discussing his latest novel, The Children Act, with an audience that will include book club members.

Michael Horovitz, British beat poet and counter-cultural mover and shaker for more than 60 years, will present poetry, music and song with Spanish singer-songwriter Vanessa Vie. His son, Adam Horovitz, poet and author of A Thousand Laurie Lees, will discuss writing about place, notably Stroud and the Slad Valley.

There’s literary parody with writer and broadcaster Sue, author of a national newspaper column called Bad Housekeeping and romance with prolific aga-saga queen Katie, who currently has two new books out, A Vintage Wedding and A Summer At Sea.

For fans of the murder mystery genre, authors will include Nikki Owen, currently trending on the lovereading.co.uk site with her new book, The Killing Files, and Jackie Kabler, whose first book, The Dead Dog Day, shot straight up Amazon’s overall Kindle bestseller list.

There will also plenty for children to do – including workshops with illustrators Martha Lightfoot and Rebecca Ashdown and meet the authors sessions with, among others, John Dougherty, writer of the Stinkbomb and Ketchup-Face series, and Hannah Shaw, inventor of sewer hero, Stan Stinky.

The festival will be held from Friday, November 11 to Sunday, November 20. Details of venues will be revealed in due course.