NORWICH UNESCO CITY OF LITERATURE 2 A CITY OF FIRSTS IN 2012, NORWICH CONSOLIDATED ITS POSITION AS ENGLAND’S FOREMOST LITERARY CITY BY BECOMING ITS FIRST UNESCO CITY OF LITERATURE, JOINING AN ELITE INTERNATIONAL NETWORK COMPRISING EDINBURGH, MELBOURNE, IOWA CITY, DUBLIN AND REYKJAVIK. Here are ten reasons to be proud of Norwich’s literary influence: 1 A CITY OF LITERATURE Norwich has been a literary city for 900 years: a place of ideas where the power of words has changed lives, promulgated parliamentary democracy, fomented revolution, fought for the abolition of slavery and transformed the literary arts. Today, it remains the regional centre for publishing and is home to five per cent of the UK’s independent publishing sector. People in Norwich spend more per capita on culture than anywhere else in the UK, and Norwich remains a destination for poets, novelists, biographers, playwrights, translators, editors, literary critics, social critics, historians, environmentalists and philosophers. It is a place for writers as agents of change.
WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL
The first book written by a woman in the English language came from the pen of Julian of Norwich in 1395, when a series of visions led her to compose Revelations of Divine Love – an extraordinary contemplation of universal love and hope in a time of plague, religious schism, uprisings and war. In the sixteenth century, the first poem in blank verse was written here by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. The first English provincial library (1608) and newspaper (1701) followed, and Norwich was also the first place to implement the Public Library Act of 1850. More recently, in 1970, Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson founded the UK’s first Creative Writing MA at University of East Anglia (UEA); Ian McEwan was the first graduate. In 2006, Norwich became the first (and still is the only) UK city to join the International Cities of Refuge Network, which was formed to promote free speech and support imperilled writers. 3 A CITY OF LIBRARIES The Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library, housed in the magnificent Forum in the heart of Norwich, has been the most-visited public library in the UK for the past five years and lends more items than any other in the country. Across the city, the Cathedral library is home to more than 20,000 books (some dating back to the fifteenth century), while the John Innes Centre hosts a remarkable collection of natural-history and rare books.
4 A CITY OF INDEPENDENT BOOKSHOPS AND PUBLISHERS The Jarrold family arrived in the East of England in the seventeenth century, bringing with them the art of printing and bookbinding. They published Anna Sewell’s global bestseller Black Beauty in 1877, and today the Jarrolds department store contains one of the foremost independent bookshops in the UK. Norwich’s newest addition, The Book Hive, opened in 2009 to national praise and in 2011 was named by The Telegraph as the Best Small Independent Bookshop in Britain. 5 A CITY FOR WRITERS AND READERS Formed in 2004, and the force behind Norwich’s UNESCO bid, Writers’ Centre Norwich is a literature development agency that works locally, nationally and internationally. It provides professional development for writers through workshops, courses, networking and competitions, reaches thousands of children through innovative school programmes, connects with readers through a successful summer reading campaign, and hosts a series of highprofile events throughout the year. The Worlds international gathering of writers is held each June and offers a uniquely writer-focused forum for discussion and debate about writing and literature from a writer’s perspective. In March 2012, Writers’ Centre Norwich was awarded £3 million from Arts Council England’s Capital Investment Programme fund to develop the National Centre for Writing (NCW). The NCW, in partnership with Norwich City Council, UEA and Norfolk County Council, will be a hub for excellence in literature from around the world.
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