Liverpool's never been a city inclined to keep culture quiet. Why should it?
It sings from cellar bars, spills across gallery walls and turns up - frequently uninvited but usually welcome - in its streets, pubs, warehouses and former industrial buildings. So it's perhaps fitting that the city’s largest book festival should look rather less like a hushed literary gathering and rather more like Liverpool itself: lively, generous, sociable and not remotely worried about mixing its genres.
Liverpool Book Festival returns to BoxPark in the Baltic Triangle on Sunday 2 August for a Summer Special bringing together more than 60 regional authors alongside live music, independent traders, street food, workshops, cosplay characters and a substantial children’s programme.
And if your life's unravelled to the extent that you think you should write a book about it - there'll also be tarot readings and a live hypnosis demonstration to help you.
We mention this partly because it's not a sentence we usually get to include when we're shouting about one of our beloved northern lit fests. (And partly because anybody who's ever emerged from a truly good novel several hours later, slightly dazed and temporarily unsure which century they inhabit, already understands that books and altered states of consciousness aren't entirely unrelated.)
This is set to be the festival’s third outing, and its organisers are creating something broader than the conventional book fair. Authors will be able to meet readers and sell their work directly, while publishers, booksellers and other members of the region’s writing community will have an opportunity to make connections away from the algorithms and crowded online marketplaces that increasingly shape the business of books.
For readers, meanwhile, it offers something the internet still can't quite reproduce: the pleasure of discovering an unfamiliar book, speaking to the person who wrote it and taking home a copy with a story already attached.
That direct relationship matters particularly for independent and regional authors. Liverpool and the wider North West possess a rich literary culture, but many writers working beyond the major publishing houses face the persistent challenge of being discovered. Events such as this allow readers to encounter voices they might never see piled prominently beside the tills of a national bookshop.
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The festival also places books within a wider day of entertainment rather than treating reading as a specialist pursuit. Acoustic musicians from across the region will perform on the main stage and outside, before DJ Laura Love (have you listened to her podcasts?) takes over with a v special afternoon selection. Talks and performances in the BeatBox conference room will include a short-film screening with live narration, alongside that promised demonstration of hypnosis. (But do be mindful of what Osho once said: "Idiots cannot be hypnotied. It is something to be remembered, that animals can be hypnotizsd, but idiots cannot be hypnotised.")
Cosplay characters from Imperial Order will be circulating too, presumably making this one of the few literary festivals at which an author’s conversation about narrative structure might be interrupted by the arrival of a Stormtrooper. (Who also works in JD Sports.)
Outside, a large children’s zone will offer storytelling, workshops and other free activities throughout the day. Under-12s can attend the festival free of charge, while adult tickets are £15.
The team behind this effort are keen to present the event as an affordable summer-holiday day out - and as an opportunity to coax younger visitors away from their screens. That last ambition might be easier said than done, but surrounding children with stories, characters, performers and writers seems a considerably more persuasive approach than simply telling them to put the tablet down.
Festival organiser Justin Hopper, of La Vida Liverpool, believes its combination of literary gathering and family festival is central to its growing appeal.
“I’m really excited for this third Liverpool Book Festival event, and they just keep getting better,” he said. “It’s a concept that blends a traditional book fair with a festival - with loads going on throughout the day and something for everyone, from book lovers to families.”
The event will also support Mersey Mind Project and our mates at the inspiring Reverse North West, who work to empower women to live without violence and fear - extending its purpose beyond providing a platform for the authors, artists, musicians and independent traders taking part.
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Liverpool Book Festival has already attracted the attention of BBC News and took third place in the Event or Festival of the Year category at the Liverpool City Region Tourism Awards. Its return suggests that the appetite for shared cultural experiences - and for meeting the people who make them - remains reassuringly strong.
At a moment when books are often purchased with a single anonymous click, there's something rather lovely about an event built around browsing, conversation and chance discovery. You might find a new novelist, introduce a child to storytelling, hear some live music or buy something peculiar from an artisan stall.
And if the hypnosis works, you might even leave utterly convinced that you've read all the books you bought.
Liverpool Book Festival Summer Special
Sunday 2 August 2026, 11am–5pm
BoxPark Liverpool, Cains Brewery Village
Stanhope Street, Baltic Triangle, Liverpool L8 5XJ
Adult tickets are £15; admission is free for children under 12.
Header image: Former Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson advises Ricky Tomlinson that hypnosis can make you better at your job. (Possibly.)
