Many of you know that we are ex-Londoners but you may not know that nowadays we are based here in sometimes sunny Thanet, on the coast of Kent. We first heard about the Margate Bookie back in 2015 when it began, and were spectacularly excited that somebody was brave enough to put together something like this! We're thrilled to announce that this year we'll be donating a specially curated one-off Ninja Book Box as a prize for the Spring Bookie. During the event, which runs from May 5th - May 7th primarily in Margate's Turner Contemporary gallery, visitors will be able to add their email into a tombola in order to have a chance to win our box.
The programme for 2018's event is excellent and eclectic as always,including everything from poetry slam to Louis de Bernieres playing mandolin and reading from his novels, as well as storytelling sessions for children and an excellently curated pop up festival bookshop.
Londoners, the great news is that Margate is less than 2 hours on the train from St. Pancras and as well as the Bookie it has gorgeous beaches, an amazing ice cream parlour, a fantastic pizza restaurant (where they are very accommodating and can easily deal with gluten intolerance and other allergies) and an historic amusement park in the form of Dreamland, so when you're not buried in the books and literary events you'll be able to find plenty to amuse yourselves. If the weather stays as it is here I'd highly recommend making a weekend of it!
You may have heard many things about Margate, but I will say that Margate is not what it once was, and I mean that in the best of ways. For a much more eloquent piece about why you should come and check out the Bookie have a read of founder Andreas Loizou's recent post for The Bookseller, How to build a literary festival in a town where most people don't care about books.
All of the events are very reasonably priced and if you're a local you can even go for free. There are lots of really intriguing things going on and so many chances to discover new authors,as well as which we'll be publishing the route for a Thanet bookshop crawl here in the next few days and we'd love you to give it a try.
There are many, many worse ways to spend a (hopefully sunny) bank holiday weekend than by the sea, celebrating excellent authors and buying yourself a book or seventeen. Come and join us at the Bookie - maybe you'll win yourself a box of Ninja greatness to really put the icing on the cake, and if not at least you'll have had a great bookish time.
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