We have a fantastic schedule of events lined-up for this year’s festival, and in advance of our full programme launch in August we are delighted to announce headline events featuring Malorie Blackman, Roddy Doyle, Helen Fielding, Jackie Kay, Lemn Sissay and Joanna Trollope.

We also have some wonderful preview and co-promotion events to whet your appetite, including the Yours Sincerely Letters Conference at the Portico Library, a word inspired double-bill at Manchester Jazz Festival and Dave Haslam in conversation with David Peace on 22nd August, so do please keep checking back to the website for details or to keep up to speed with all the latest news, sign up for our newsletter and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

You can get a flavour of what you missed at last year's festival or relive some of your personal highlights by reading reviews on our Festival blog.

You can also download specially commissioned work, including the 3rd Manchester Sermon by Ali Smith, a sequence of poems by Kei Miller responding to the Hockney to Hogarth: A Rake's Progress exhibition at the Whitworth Art Gallery and a short story by Midland Hotel writer in residence Jackie Kay here, and you can watch highlights of of our Family Reading Day below and the BBC writersroom Face 2 Face event with Sally Wainwright, here.

You can get involved in year round projects such as our Manchester Letters online blog correspondence between UK author Jenn Ashworth and Turkish writer Nermin Yildirim, Postcards from the Past Competition in partnership with MMU, and our Read It Watch It Talk About It monthly book/film club for young people.