The Marrakech English Book Festival
“The festival is organized by the Marrakech English Book Association and is co-hosted by the British Business Association (BBA) Morocco and the British Moroccan Society (BMS), and is a celebration of Marrakech and Morocco as an inspiration for all genres of books published in the English language.
The content of the festival is guided by a small independent Literary Advisory Committee.
The festival comprises of a series of events, ranging from discussions and interviews with invited authors, children’s book events (including exhibitions, readings, illustration and theatre workshops), and culinary demonstrations and lessons from food book authors.
The language of the festival is English.
The core festival events will be held over three days on the last weekend of November. Most of these will be held at venues in the Medina chosen for their architectural, historical and cultural significance in Marrakech.
Children’s events will be held at the British Academy School in Targa.
The culinary events will be held at the Maison Arabe Cookery School,
All events, except for the culinary events, will be free and open to the public. Attendance of these events will be limited to a maximum of 100 places.
The culinary events will be held at La Maison Arabe Cooking School in the Medina and will be paying ticket only, limited to 20 places.
An educational programme, held during the week prior to the weekend of the festival, will be organized in partnership with the English department of the Cadi Ayyad University with the aim of giving Moroccan English university students a chance to learn from, meet and be inspired by published authors in the English language.
The invited authors have all published books in English that have been inspired by Marrakech, Morocco or North Africa.
It is hoped that the festival will be enriched by parallel events at venues such as the World Storytelling Café and the Café Clock.
Calliope in Casablanca will run a pop-up festival bookshop in Marrakech for the duration of the festival.
The festival is non-profit making. Any profit from the festival will be donated without conditions to the official charity, Education For All Morocco.
The festival is open to sponsorship from private industry as well as institutional organizations.
The Festival Literary Advisory committee must however, approve all sponsorship and commercial partnerships to ensure the curatorial independence of the festival.
The Literary Advisory Committee is composed of 5 members, serving for a 4 year period, and who report to the Chairperson of the BBA Morocco, director of the festival organization.