World Book Night arrives...

As surely as night follows day, so World Book Night will try to emulate the success of World Book Day. The latter is already an established part of the literary calender, as each year tokens are given to school children to redeem on over 600,000 specially-published titles. Yet the new initiative will instead be aimed at adults, with the aim of providing them with 'an accessible work of enduring quality'.

20,000 people will be able to sign up to be a 'giver', and they will be able to chose a title to give away from list, including writers such as Carol Ann Duffy, John le Carre and Margaret Atwood. The 'givers' will be able to donate 48 copies of their chosen title, meaning that almost 1 million books will be given away altogether. Atwood hailed the move, saying that she was 'amazed not only by its magnitude but by its simplicity. The love of writing, the love of reading – these are huge gifts. To be able to give someone else a book you treasure widens the gift circle'.

World Book Night will be held on March 5th 2011.

On this day...

UNESCO have celebrated International Literacy Day since 1966. With the aim of highlighting the importance of literacy to indivisuals, communities, and societies, UNESCO uses the day to bring the plight of adult learning into sharper focus. Here are a few statistics as to why...

• 776 million adults lack minimum literacy skills
• one in five adults is still not literate and two-thirds of them are women
• 75 million children are out-of-school and many more attend irregularly or drop out
• South and West Asia has the lowest regional adult literacy rate with 58.6%
• Countries with the lowest literacy rates in the world are Burkina Faso (12.8%), Niger (14.4%) and Mali (19%)

A number of famous writers and global organisations are behind this year's initiative, which will focus on 'The Power of :iterature'.

On this day...

World Poetry Day is celebrated. Declared by UNESCO in 1999, the aim of the day is to promote the reading, writing, publishing and teaching of poetry throughout the world - in other words, to 'give fresh recognition and impetus to national, regional and international poetry movements'. For many years, the event had been celebrated in October.

Indeed, the latter half of the 20th century saw October 15th as the earmarked day, to coincide with the birthday of epic Roman poet Virgil. As such, many national poetry days are still celebrated in October, such as that of the UK on October 8th. In conjunction with 2010 as the year of biodiversity, this year's theme for World Poetry Day is,  'The Words of Nature, the Nature of Words'.

British literary festivals get new investment...

Baillie Gifford, an independent investment firm, has announced that they will be sponsoring some of the UK's biggest literary festivals in 2010. With assets of around £55 billion at the end of last year, the firm are certainly in a position to be active in the promotion of literature throughout the country. Starting with the Bath Literature Festival, which opens on February 27th, Baillie Gifford will support seven festivals in total, including those in Cheltenham, Edinburgh and Windsor. They will also support the newly named, 'Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Award'. The marketing director of the firm said, 'We like to believe in a correlation with the dilliegence and imagination that sucessful writers bring to the creative process and what we bring to investments here at Baillie Gifford'.

Durham book festival...

The Durham Book Festival was held last week, with the theme of 'Free Range Reading'; appealing to every age and taste. From 'story parties for the under-fives' to a 'Vampire Writing Club', the festival aimed to inspire and educate; galvanising people both to write themeselves and explore the works of others. Guest speakers included authors Kate Mosse and Nick Hornby and the former and current Poet Laureates Andrew Motion and Carol Ann Duffy. It is hoped that this will assist Durham's bid to become Capital of Culture in 2013.

Cheltenham festival...

The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival was held last week, celebrating its 60th birthday. The speakers were from all sorts of fields and included: Simon Armitage, Dr. Alice Roberts, Rageh Omaar and Vic Reeves. Links to some of the video highlights can be found here and there is also a literary brochure which can be downloaded here