For almost 80 years, The Lewes Lit has been running an annual programme of events featuring prestigious writers from diverse backgrounds including novelists, poets, historians, biographers, and playwrights as well as artists, illustrators and cartoonists. On our past events page you will see the fascinating and varied list of previous speakers and in addition, our video archive page gives you bite-sized extracts from some of our more recent events.

The Lewes Lit was originally known as the Monday Literary Society before changing its name to The Lewes Literary Society and more recently morphing into The Lewes Lit. Leonard Woolf was our president from 1954 until 1969. We are privileged to have Grace Nichols and John Agard as our current Presidents, both of whom have been awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, with John also receiving the CLiPPA (children’s poetry award) in July 2026.

We hold six monthly events each year between October and April. Speakers discuss recent works including fiction of every kind, nonfiction, poetry, graphic novels and more. We have been lucky enough to invite many brilliant speakers just before they became famous including Bernadine Evaristo; Sathnam Sanghera and Abdulrazak Gurnah. Our events are held on a Tuesday evening between 7.30pm and 8.30pm except for our January event when we spend an afternoon celebrating the work of a famous children’s author with local connections. These have included Allan Ahlberg, Raymond Briggs and Eve Garnett. For these events specialists are joined by the writers’ friends, collaborators and admirers to provide an entertaining and well-rounded look at their lives and work.

Our events are held in the centre of Lewes at the All Saints Centre, Friars Walk, Lewes BN7 2LE. The venue is close to transport links, including Lewes Station and buses serving a number of places including Brighton, Ringmer and Heathfield.