Last night, in the downstairs Court Room of the Town Hall chair Genevieve Clarke declared this year’s LitFest, the fifteenth happening of what has become Marlborough’s premier annual event, open.
Authors, volunteers, and many of those involved in the ‘team’ (a very wide sense of that term) were present to celebrate and recognise the start of Marlborough LitFest ’24. The culmination of everybody’s massive efforts to make LitFest bigger, better, and most importantly of all more attractive and of greater interest to the reading public of Marlborough and beyond than ever before.
But Genevieve also delivered a surprise: to many, anyway, that this is her last LitFest as chair. Genevieve took over the role from Jan Williamson in 2018, who had succeeded the original Chair, Mavis Cheek a few years earlier.
A touching moment ensued. Having steered LitFest for six years it was time to move on. Genevieve introduced her successor Mary-Vere Parr to all, and also there on stage was Jan Williamson a Founder member of LitFest who took over from the late Mavis Cheek as Chair in 2015. A ‘Trinity of Chairs’ for LitFest.
Candy Gourlay at Marlborough LitFest’s Big School Read
