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First paragraph: Since the Second World War, a common conception has been that the literary festival has become one of the key sites for the promotion of books and literary culture in the UK. As currently conceived by the myriad of festivals worldwide dedicated to celebrating literary culture and the book, the literary festival conjoins the commercial aspects found in trade book fairs around the world (selling books, exhibiting new titles, offering space for trade representatives to meet) with the promotion of new and established writers through public readings, book signings and encounters with readers. The literary festival has become a major fixture on the publishing circuit, utilised to showcase new works by established authors and provide high visibility and marketing opportunities for publishers. The first multi-sessional literary festival of this sort in Britain was launched in Cheltenham in 1949. In the post-war period, and particularly after 1970, the development of the literary festival continued, to the extent that by 2015, the number of literary and literature-related festivals in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales had risen exponentially to over 217.2 This growth, which is explored later in this chapter, attests to the values (social, cultural and financial) of such events to local economies and communities. The work of literary festivals in terms of shaping writing, publishing and reading communities has continued to grow in the era of digital media. The opportunity to meet authors and fellow readers face-to-face, to buy books and other merchandise, and to align a liking for literature with travel and tourism, is being taken up by hundreds of thousands of readers every year. In the twenty-first century, an event- and location-based literary culture has also expanded opportunities for face-to-face encounters with virtual participation via social media interactions, live streaming, and podcasting.

This thesis explores the international Book Town Movement that, from its beginnings in the small Welsh market town of Hay-on-Wye in the early 1960s, has escalated to incorporate more than 50 villages and towns in 27 countries. This phenomenon has enabled peripheral communities in Europe and across the globe to reclaim their economic futures and impact on the cultural sphere as increasingly powerful sites and sources of creativity. This study seeks to understand the reasons for this renaissance of interest in the preservation of traditional print culture in the countryside at a point in history when the book publishing industry is in a state of flux as it adapts to new digital technologies and globalisation of markets, leading to a clarification of the relationship between new books and the second-hand book economy. At the centre of this investigation is an acknowledgement of the book as a unique item of cultural consumption and a catalyst in book town creation – at once a remarkable artefact and a springboard for contemporary cultural debate. Essential to an understanding of book towns is their location on the geographical periphery and their capacity to sustain regional culture and identity. This thesis analyses innovative book town examples from diverse parts of the world using four key research methods: site-based research, case study research, cultural policy research and book culture research. This research aims to inform a broader discussion of regional regeneration and cultural policy development through an investigation of book towns as ‘down on their luck’ places, reanimated to celebrate remarkable pasts and designed to captivate a growing middle-class cohort drawn to nostalgia, history, cultural heritage and tranquil rural settings that deliver both intellectual stimulation and wellbeing. The synergy of the book town ethos with a number of evolving global tourism trends – including cultural tourism and, more recently, post-tourism – has heightened their desirability. By exploring the history and origins of the Book Town Movement, the thesis links book towns to the entrepreneurship of bibliophiles seeking more utopian lifestyles, and culture-led regeneration by governments wanting to harness their capacity to increase social capital and generate economic revival.

While there are multiple approaches to researching cultural events, predominant academic frames tend to be either sociological or situated within a creative industries discourse. Neither of these approaches have supported sustained engagement with individual, interior experience at book festivals. Creative writers have imaginatively depicted these sites of author-reader interaction, and developing scholarship focuses on autoethnography and the phenomenological. In this article, we extend and materialise these approaches through a series of creative, arts-informed interventions: @AuthorsYurt, a personification on Twitter of the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s green room; Paper Dolls, a series of cut-out-and-dress dolls depicting audience members at a variety of book festivals across Europe, North America and Australia; and ClueButeDo, a satirical reworking of the audience feedback form at a small island crime festival in the UK. Each of the three experiments reveals aspects of personhood at book festivals, engaging with ideas of interiority, individuality, and experientiality, as well as of inclusion and exclusion. In pursuing this aim, we are guided by the autoethnographic slogan, “No Insight Without Inside, No Inside Without Outside” (Nunu Otot)., Bien qu’il existe de multiples approches en matière de recherche sur les activités culturelles, les cadres universitaires prédominants ont tendance à être sociologiques, ou encore inspirés de la manière dont on aborde les industries créatives. Ceux-ci ne permettent pas de prendre véritablement en compte l’expérience individuelle et intérieure vécue lors de festivals du livre. Des écrivains ont dépeint ces lieux d’interaction entre l’auteur et le lecteur; de son côté, la recherche actuelle tend à s’axer sur l’autoethnographie et la phénoménologie. Dans l’article, nous prolongeons et rendons plus tangibles ces approches en nous appuyant sur diverses interventions créatives, inspirées des arts : @AuthorsYurt, une personnification, sur Twitter, de la salle verte du Festival international du livre d’Édimbourg; Paper Dolls, des poupées de papier à habiller représentant des membres du public présent à divers festivals du livre en Europe, en Amérique du Nord et en Australie; et ClueButeDo, une reformulation satirique des commentaires de participants à un festival du roman noir tenu sur la petite île de Bute au Royaume-Uni. Chacun de ces exemples révèle des aspects de la personne telle qu’elle se situe dans un festival du livre, à partir des notions d’intériorité, d’individualité et d’expérientialité, ainsi que d’inclusion et d’exclusion. Nous sommes ici guidées par le slogan autoethnographique « No Insight Without Inside, No Inside Without Outside » (« Pas d’intériorité sans intérieur, pas d’intérieur sans extérieur ») (Nunu Otot).