Northern Ireland

Book fairs in Northern Ireland bring together a small, distinct circuit of festivals on the island of Ireland, north of the border. The events here are regional rather than international in scale, held in Belfast and in the grounds of a country house, and they serve readers and writers from both Northern Ireland and the Republic.

Ballyscullion Park Book Festival and Belfast Book Festival are the two fairs that carry this tag, and they sit in a region that shares a land border with no other part of the United Kingdom. That is what separates Northern Ireland from England, Scotland and Wales: a fair here draws readers and writers from both sides of the Irish border, and the programme reflects two literary traditions at once. Belfast Book Festival runs in the city that gave the world C. S. Lewis, while Ballyscullion Park Book Festival takes place in a country house setting in County Londonderry.