Cult author Philip Pullman is to head the bill at a Liverpool literary festival to celebrate Capital of Culture year.
The writer of the His Dark Materials trilogy is the first big name to be signed up to the Liverpool University event. The festival is due to take place in November 2008 and will include local and national names taking part in readings, discussions and debates.
Dinah Birch, head of the university's school of English, says it is the first time in many years - if ever - that the department has held anything similar.
The festival, likely to be titled Shipping Lines in homage to Liverpool's history as one of the world's greatest ports, is one of a number of ideas the department has to mark Capital of Culture year.
But Prof Birch has emphasised it is still in the early stages of development and the final programme will be dictated by funding available.
She said: 'November may seem late in culture year, but it will be good to spread events out a little.
'We're planning a diverse programme because we want to celebrate the diversity of Liverpool's identity. We'll be looking at specific local voices but also facing outwards in the way the city has always done.
Shipping Lines will be in addition to Liverpool's acclaimed independent Writing on the Wall festival which takes place annually in April.
Most of the programme will be based at the university itself, but organisers are looking at whether some events can take place in other city venues.
Prof Birch added: 'We want the festival to be a way in which people who aren't professional literary types can encounter different kinds of writers.
'Philip Pullman's writing has been enormously popular but it's also profoundly academic and engages with the great literary traditions of Milton and Blake.'
Philip Pullman was born in Norwich in 1946, and educated in England, Zimbabwe and Australia, before his family settled in North Wales.
His first children's book was Count Karlstein (1982), followed by The Ruby in the Smoke (1986), the first in a quartet of books featuring the young Victorian adventurer, Sally Lockhart.
He is most famous for the trilogy His Dark Materials, which has won many awards, including the Whitbread prize - the first time it has ever been awarded to a children's book.
The first of the trilogy, Northern Lights - known as The Golden Compass in America, is being made into a film which is due for release in 2007.
[© The Chronicle, 28/07/06]
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