About FLF

Finchley Literary Festival is a community organisation dreamed up and co-ordinated by Rosie Canning and Lindsay Bamfield. We are a not-for-profit organisation. The first festival was set up to focus on activities of their Finchley writers' group, Greenacre Writers. They held the 'Greenacre Writers' Mini Lit Fest' in 2012 comprising one event with five guests, Paolo Hewitt, Alex Wheatle, Emily Benet, Andrew Bradford and Lane Ashfeldt reading and discussing their work, along with readings from members of  Greenacre Writers.

Owing to its success, the following year's events included an Open Mic event facilitated by Allen Ashley and two writing workshops, one led by Miriam Halahmy and the other by Josie Pearse, as well as the main event with invited authors, Sarah Harrison, Leigh Russell, Gina Blaxill and C.J. Flood. Alex Wheatle also joined the authors for a panel discussion at the festival's close.

In 2014 the festival was renamed Finchley Literary Festival, reflecting involvement of more people in the local writing community, and a larger festival was organised courtesy of additional funding. Twenty events were held in various locations around Finchley including workshops, talks, walks and a Spoken Word event. The finale included members of Greenacre Writers and guest authors Caitlin Davies, Rosie Fiore, Alex Wheatle, who were joined by Miriam Halahmy for a discussion panel.

2015's festival had seventeen events with a repeat of popular events such as the Poetry and Music Palooza and the literary walks but with new workshops, author talks from Mike Carey, Antonia Honeywell, Jen Campbell and Duncan Barrett, another successful YA event and a finale featuring the best of local and new writing from a number of invited guests.

We were thrilled that Finchley Literary Festival was awarded 'Best event of the in Barnet', 2015 by the Barnet Eye Community awards.

The 2016 festival comprised eleven events including author events with a great variety of books genres, a workshop for writers, a literary walk, and a return of the popular Music and Performance Poetry Palooza. Featured authors were Harry Parker, A. L. Bird, Yvvette Edwards, Irenosen Okojie, Catriona Ward, Joanna Campbell, Antonia Honeywell and Rosie Canning, Sunny Singh, Vaseem Khan and Katharine Norbury.

Finchley Literary Festival was again named 'Barnet Event of the Year', 2016. "It just gets better and better every year. A festival for grown ups and a key part of Barnet's cultural calendar"