Martyn Bedford - Writer

It’s always nice to be invited to literary festivals but, it has to be said, some invitations are just a tad more exciting than others. So I’m especially pleased to have been asked to fly out to Rimini next month for the Mare di Libri (Sea of Books) Festival, which is Italy’s foremost event for young adult and children’s fiction.

I’ll be there as a guest of the festival and my Milan-based publisher, De Agostini, to promote the Italian edition of Twenty Questions for Gloria (published in translation as Tutta La Verita Su Gloria Ellis). For my event, I’ll be interviewed on-stage – with an interpreter, I hope! – by Simonetta Bitasi, a writer, performer and promoter of children’s literature.

The festival, now in its tenth year, draws in audiences of young readers from across northern Italy and is held in the historic centre of ‘old’ Rimini, a town best known as a destination for holidaymakers, with its glorious beaches along the Adriatic coast.

There’s an international line-up of YA authors at this year’s event, which runs from June 16-18, including several high-profile British, American and Canadian writers – among them, Carnegie medal-winners Kevin Brooks, Aidan Chambers and Jennifer Donnelly, as well as Kenneth Oppel, Katherine Rundell and Lisa Williamson – and the leading lights of Italian and other mainland European teen fiction. To see the programme in full, click on this link to the festival website.