

Sat 20 Sept
|The Observer Building
Lemn Sissay
Writer and broadcaster Lemn Sissay is our Saturday night headliner. Book now to be part of an entrancing evening from an inspirational master of the spoken word.
Time & Location
20 Sept 2025, 20:00 – 21:00
The Observer Building, 53 Cambridge Rd, Hastings TN34 1DT, UK
About The Event
Lemn Sissay OBE is a BAFTA award winning poet, author, speaker and broadcaster whose memoir My Name is Why was listed by no less than ten newspapers as their book of the year. and was a Sunday Times bestseller One of the nation’s best known and most loved poets, Lemn was awarded the PEN Pinter Prize in 2019 and in 2021 received an OBE for services to literature and charity.
His acclaimed best-selling collection, Let the Light Shine in, brings together work from the last decade, during which time Lemn has produced a short poem as dawn breaks each day. Affirmative, witty and full of wonder, these poems chronicle his own battle with the darkness and are fuelled with resilience and defiant joy.
Lemn has spoken all over the world and we are honoured that he will be part of the 2025 Book Festival, when he will be reading from…


