Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction -- Recognising literary festivals -- Patterns of attendance and experience -- Online and onsite : intersections in embodied and digital engagement -- festival as policy vehicle : creative industries, creative cities and the creative class -- Festival as field : literary festivals as instantiations of larger cultural spaces -- Conclusion : rules of the game -- Appendix 1 : survey participants' sentiments towards direct engagement with writers -- Appendix 2 : survey participants' sentiments towards engagement with the festival audience and the festival space -- Appendix 3 : survey participants' sentiments towards engagement with content and concepts.

There has been a proliferation of literary festivals in recent decades, with more than 450 held annually in the UK and Australia alone. These festivals operate as tastemakers shaping cultural consumption; as educational and policy projects; as instantiations, representations, and celebrations of literary communities; and as cultural products in their own right. As such they strongly influence how literary culture is produced, circulates and is experienced by readers in the 21st century. This book explores how audiences engage with literary festivals, and analyses these festivals' relationship to local and digital literary communities, to the creative industries focus of contemporary cultural policy, and to the broader literary field.