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Wolverhampton Literature Festival: Organiser Phil Turner tells us all

His day job is organising concerts by Jimmy Carr and Gary Numan.

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But Wolverhampton's Literature Festival organiser Phil Turner has immersed himself in the world of books in recent months after being tasked with creating a celebration of the written word.

For once, he's not been concerned about buying the correct bottle of wine for a travelling performer or making sure there is a VGA cable connection that's long enough to reach the stage of Wolverhampton's Civic Hall.

Instead, he's been focused on bringing Miles Hunt, Narinder Dhami, Sathnam Sanghera and other talents to Wolverhampton's inaugural Literature Festival.

The event takes place next weekend, January 27 to 29, at venues across the city. And while there are six ticketed events, there are many more that will be free. Phil, who usually works on booking gigs for Wolverhampton's Civic and Wulfrun Halls, as well as the Slade Rooms, laughs about his involvement in the event.

"I was sitting in a meeting at the wrong place at the wrong time.

"A chap from the university and our manager, Mark Blackstock, were discussing how good it would be to have a literature festival. We have all these council spaces like the Art Gallery and Bantock House and we were quite keen to use them."

The city has previously held nothing on the scale of the Wolverhampton Original Literature Festival (WOLF for short) and Phil is glad that that's about to change.

"I think there's been nothing like this happening before and we had no idea why."

The public have been the driving force in the event and it is their enthusiasm that organisers hope to harness. In coming years, Phil and his steering group will be able to tailor more events to local tastes.

But, for now, it's all about running an event successfully and finding events that the general public likes.

"We haven't really been sure where the areas of interest are and the only way to find that out is test it. So in many ways, this year is a bit of a pilot.

"The event with Sathnam Sanghera at the Art Gallery on Saturday has been really popular and so is the talk from Miles Hunt, from The Wonder Stuff. They are very different shows but both are selling well. But most of the events are free so we won't really know until the weekend.

"People are devoting their time and their talent to make it work."

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