Spotlit Field Notes: Issue 3
The literary festival newsletter
Spotlit Field Notes is the literary festival newsletter from Ilona, Mathew and Rina, the team behind Spotlit, a platform connecting festivals with brilliant new books and authors.
Are book festivals still about books?
Zoe Strimpel’s recent column in the Spectator took a swipe at Hay Festival, suggesting it had forgotten about books. Her main bone of contention was an event that had Palestine Action in its subtitle, but she went on to criticise its woke reusable milk churns (can you even get single use milk churns?) the BBC, celebrity culture, climate posturing etc. All pretty standard culture war stuff, but it does reflect a wider discussion about the changing role of literary festivals. Should they have a broader outlook - as they are now forums for headline political and civic discussions? What is the balance? In London this week, Katy Arnander is overseeing SXSW - “Where music, film, tech, culture collide.” It has a monumental line-up of over 800 speakers - including Michelle Obama and Sadiq Khan - the majority of talks are not to promote a book. Is it time for festivals to think beyond the book? We would love to know what you ta. If anyone wants to contribute a short piece on this subject, let us know.
Authors Beware…
There has been a recent surge of festivals warning authors that scammers are impersonating their staff to try and extract fake ‘participation’ fees.
Beacon, Bournemouth, Bradford, Brighton, Buckingham, Edinburgh, Essex, Foreword, Stratford, West Cork and Wigtown festivals have all issued warnings to authors to beware of emails offering festival appearance opportunities.
Once an approached author says they are interested, they learn that payment for participation is required. The invitations often seem to come from named real employees and correctly identify book titles but they actually come from generic Gmail addresses and payment details are for banks in Nigeria. This is a new iteration of the scams that have dogged literary scouts and book editors for years, except this time with a more obvious financial rip-off component.
New to Spotlit...
Salt Publishing, Velocity, Bodleian Library Press, Pluto Press and Heloise all added fantastic books to Spotlit this week, taking the total number of publishers to over 30. Our weekly newsletter goes out weekly to over 700 festivals, programmers, publishers and publicists.
BLF wins the double
In 2025, over 187,000 (it made us do a double-take) people attended the Bradford Literary Festival’s more than 750 events, with 61% of all tickets free of charge (cue double-take, take two) - in line with their pioneering Ethical Ticketing Policy.
Recently, the BLF won Best Civic & Social Organisation Business of the Year at both the 2026 SME500 UK and the Global 100 awards. The festival is dedicated to making literature and culture accessible, regardless of circumstance. In 2026, it takes place Friday 3 July to Sunday 12 July at a variety of venues spread across the city.
Party Time
At Daunt Books Holland Park, we celebrated Diamond Life’s launch party with London based author Anna Maconochie (right) and her publisher Aina Marti of Héloïse Press. With over 100 guests, 20 bottles of wine, and 75 copies sold (all of them!), it was a flying start for this new collection of short stories, out on June 9. On the right is the launch of Once, a fearless and forensice collection of poetry and prose by Ruth Rosengarten pictured here with Elte Rauch (right) the publisher of The New Meard Press
We would love to see your photos from launch parties and book talks happening each week. Send them to ilona@tigerteamcreative.com. It is a simple way to get your book in front of the 700+ influential people that receive the newsletter each week. And make the Spotlit campers wonder whether we’re getting out enough.
James Tait Black Prize and Pushkin House Prize
We were delighted to see a strong showing of small presses on the James Tait Black Prize - to wit, Fitzcarraldo (although calling them a small press is like calling Bloomsbury an indie publisher, given the amount of heft and reach Fitzcarraldo enjoys these days) and our Queen Mary Prize friends Peirene Press and Divided Publishing. Equally strong on the Biography shortlist, with Granta, Birlinn and Bridge Street Press.
The recently announced Pushkin House Prize is also big on independent publishers with Pushkin House (no relation!) and Polity Press representing trade, and two university presses (Manchester U and UCL) hoisting the flag for accessible academia.
and finally . . .
Edinburgh Book Festival is currently recruiting for a Director of Operations, a Finance Director and Children’s Venue Facilitator.
Publishers and publicists please add your books to Spotlit. It’s free and takes just a few minutes.
If you would like your event featured in the newsletter or would like to be interviewed about your festival drop us a line at: mathewclayton@gmail.com. This newsletter goes to over 700 bookish people working in the sector.
Ilona and Rina can also be found at Tiger Team Creative.
Authors, try out Further Reading, a simple promotional tool built by Mathew.
Ilona, Mathew and Rina xxx
p.s. This week Ilona is re-reading Train Dreams by Denis Johnson (Granta) - a masterpiece of positive texture and negative space - before finally watching the recent, highly acclaimed film. A whole life and consciousness told in fleeting, almost hallucinatory vignettes, the novella is far vaster than the number of words assembled - leaving you with a strange, lingering feeling like an afterimage, or an overtone that hangs in the air after the chord has fallen silent. Not a fan of the reductive reissue cover, but horses for courses. Or, even, wolves.
p.p.s Mathew is reading Ilona’s list of The 100 best novels you'll never see on the Guardian's list.
