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02/03/04 - Cumbria Libraries to host World Book Day Online Festival

Library users in Cumbria can log on for a live web chat with JK Rowling on World Book Day when she launches the second World Book Day Online Festivalon Thursday 4 March 2004.

This year’s Festival will also feature twelve other best-selling writers, including Nick Hornby, Jacqueline Wilson, Benjamin Zephaniah and Minette Walters, in a mixture of specially commissioned films and live online chats.

Libraries across the country are playing a major part in the second World Book Day Online Festival and readers in Cumbria will be able to access the World Book Day Online Festival via the People’s Network, which provides internet access in all UK public libraries.   

Visiting your local library also provides a great opportunity for people to meet up with fellow readers from morning until evening, to share reading loves and hates, to explore new genres, and surf the net for new reading ideas.

The Festival films and transcripts of the web chats will then be archived at   www.worldbookdayfestival.com so they can be visited well beyond World Book Day. 

The Festival is funded by Arts Council England and managed by The Reading Agency on behalf of the Festival partners: World Book Day, The Reading Agency, Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, Society of Chief Librarians, Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, and Colman Getty. 

The full Festival programme is as follows:

  • JK Rowling launches the Festival with a live online chat about her books, her writing and the kind of books she likes to read.  Readers can submit questions at www.worldbookdayfestival.com from midnight on Thursday 4 March.
  • Kes Gray and Nick Sharratt bring their Daisy books to life in a hilarious double-act from the Sunshine Library in Wakefield.
  • A coffee break with award-winning crime writer Minette Walters, who’ll be talking about the books that have inspired her.
  • Sarah Waters filmed at Swiss Cottage Library, talking about how she brings history to life in her novels.
  • A Teddy Bear’s Picnic with leading children’s author and illustrator Debi Gliori.
  • An online chat with the Whitbread award-winning author of Coram Boy, Jamila Gavin about her dazzling books, life and travels.
  • Best-selling children’s author Jacqueline Wilson receives over 300 fan letters every week and replies to every one. See why in this extraordinary film.
  • A film of Benjamin Zephaniah in performance at Westminster Hall, then talking about the empowerment that books and reading give to young people, and his life as a poet and novelist.
  • A web chat with Jackie Kay on how she successfully made the transition from poet to novelist and her own reading loves.
  • Nick Hornby takes a wry look at the film adaptations of his and other books, and we get the view from members of the public on the street.
  • A film of Anthony Horowitz at the London Aquarium as he talks about his fascination with spies and sharks. The rest is Top Secret!
  • Chat online with Tony Hawks, the author of Round Ireland with a Fridge, and Playing the Moldovans at Tennis, whose latest book recounts his hilarious attempts to make a hit record.