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The Royal Festival Hall is closed on Thursday 3 September, re-opening at 5pm to ticket holders only for Letters Live at 7.30pm. The National Poetry Library remains open with entry via the Royal Festival Hall Artists’ Entrance.

Author Ashley Hickson-Lovence wearing a dark grey shirt standing in front of a tree

Ashley Hickson-Lovence

Ashley Hickson-Lovence is the author of the acclaimed novels The 392, Your Show and Wild East, winner of the East Anglian Book Awards 2024 and the YA winner of the Diverse Book Awards 2025. His poetry collection Why I Am Not a Bus Driver includes the poem ‘Munster Road’, highly commended for Best Single Poem at the Forward Prize. He holds a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of East Anglia and was nominated for the London Chamber of Commerce Black Excellence Award for Outstanding Contribution to Literature in 2023. His latest novel, About to Fall Apart, was published by Faber in April, and his new YA verse novel, Dead Ends, will be published by Penguin in February 2027.