The Primadonna Festival will take place as a physical event this summer returning to Suffolk in a new venue with guests including Naoise Dolan, Adele Parks and Michèle Roberts.
The 2021 festival will take place at the Museum of East Anglian Life in the market town of Stowmarket from 30st July to 1st August.
“The venue may be different, but Primadonna 2021 promises the same unique mix of big names and emerging voices in fiction and non-fiction, as well as comedy, live music, food, performance and more. The same ingredients which made the festival such a smorgasbord of delight when launched,” organisers said. Tickets for the July 2020 event, which was called off owing to Covid-19, are valid for 2021.
Food writer Grace Dent will headline at the festival as well as Dolan (author of debut Exciting Times, Weidenfeld & Nicolson), authors Roberts and Parks, anti-racism advocate and activist Sophie Williams and writer and theatre-maker Stella Duffy. Helen Lederer, writer, performer and founder of the Comedy Women in Print Prize, will appear in conversation with Primadonna co-founder Lisa Milton, HQ publisher, in “a no-holds-barred confessional covering the highs and lows of these two indomitable women’s careers”.
There will also be agents, publishers, promoters and journalists at the event enabling attendees to directly pitch their work or ask industry figures for advice. “Two aspiring writers who went to the first Primadonna came away with book deals, and one of the virtual festival’s participants now writes for Radio 4’s ‘NewsJack’ under the mentorship of Sioned William, a Primadonna co-founder and BBC Radio 4 commissioning editor for comedy,” organisers said.
