| Open Book Festival | |
| Status: | Active |
| Genre: | Multi-genre |
| Venue: | Fugard Theatre |
| Location: | Cape Town |
| Country: | South Africa |
| First: | 2011 |
| Attendance: | 20,000 |
| Website: | http://openbookfestival.co.za |
The Open Book Festival is an annual literary festival held in Cape Town, South Africa with a focus on South African literature in an international context. The event includes over 150 literary events,[1] featuring over 100 authors over 5 days. Although South African literature features prominently literature from across the world is also featured with both Anglophone and Francophone authors featuring prominently in the festivals events.[2] [3]
Main venue of the event is located at the Fugard Theatre but also includes other nearby venues in Cape Town such as The District 6 Museum, The Homecoming Centre, the Townhouse Hotel, The Slave Lodge, The Museum, The National Gallery, Central Library and Lobby Books.[4]
The first Open Book festival was held in 2011. The event was initiated by Mervyn Sloman of The Book Lounge (a Cape Town-based bookshop) and Ben Williams of Books Live (a literary focused subsidiary of the South African newspaper Times Live).[5]
The festival was founded to bring the best literature in the world to Cape Town; to promote South African writing on an internationally; and to make books and literature more accessible to young readers. The event is noted for being more representative and drawing a wider range of authors than other South African book festivals.[6]
Most of the 150 events fall into one of the following sub-events with particular focuses:[7]