Welcome to Luton Literature

Our aim is to encourage a love of reading and creative writing at any age through a range of events, activities and initiatives, and to promote the early uptake of reading in children. To help achieve this, We have opened a community book shop in High Town, Luton called Brown Books. Our lovely little bookshop sells a mix of second hand and new books, as well as gift ideas and even coffee!

Brown Books has been running for fours years now, and the funds raised go back to Luton Literature, helping to keep the shop open and helping to fund our bi-annual book festival and our literary based projects.

We are not-for-profit.

Current Projects

Here’s a snapshot of our ongoing and new projects.

Luton Literature Book Festival
Our Book Festival takes place every two years. Our 2024 festival celebrated diversity in literature with a vibrant programme of national adult and children’s author events, a writer’s salon, workshops, storytelling sessions, and a panel discussion featuring SI Leeds Literary Prize Shortlisted authors.

We successfully delivered our first ever Book Festival in 2022,  take a look at our Facebook page to see all the photos and videos from the day.

Brown Books Community Bookshop
Our community bookshop Brown Books is in High Town, Luton.
We sell a wide range of secondhand (preloved) books and a small range of new books. The shop is a hub for author events, workshops D&D sessions, literature and creative writing workshops and other literary based projects and activities. Why not pop in and see what we have in store, our address:
Brown Books Community Bookshop
77 High Town Road, LU2 0BW 
Luton Literature Book Festival
Scribbles & Squiggles
Scribbles & Squiggles is a structured yet flexible creative programme that offers poets and artists the opportunity to step outside their usual practice and respond to each others work in a supportive, inspiring environment. It is suitable for all levels, including beginners!
Over the course of six months, participants will meet twice a month to explore and discuss, and create visual responses to poetry and visual works. Rather than delivering traditional teaching, “Scribbles & Squiggles” facilitates learning through creative practice, dialogue, and inspiration. The focus is on process, experimentation, and creative exchange. It will also provide opportunities for networking and sharing experiences.
Sessions will be led and facilitated by local poet Kat All That and writer/teacher Judith Beels. They will be supported by visual artist Imogen Brown. The workshop leaders and assist will provide light-touch guidance, prompts, and thematic structure each month.
Come to our next taster session in the bookshop on Wednesday 17 December at 7pm.
Watch videos from our festival
You can now watch the live streamed videos on our YouTube channel.
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Past Projects

Past projects our fantastic team have been working on!

Luton Literature Book Festival
We’ll be delivering our first ever Book Festival this year.

Take a look at our amazing line-up!

High Town Christmas Fete
A full day packed with arts and crafts for children, Santa’s grotto, music and Christmas carols, and a stall with food, crafts and gifts. Find out more on our High Town Christmas Fete page.
Luton Literature workshops
As part of the Book Festival, we ran some creative writing workshops over the summer.

We produced a booklet with funding support from Luton Rising to showcase a selection of the creative pieces by those children who attended, and with some blank pages for those who came to the festival to have a go at creating their own works and to use in the events.

Download a copy using this link.

The Brown Books Community Bookshop Team
Andy
Senior Bookseller
Gabby
Assistant Bookseller
Dee
Bookseller

The Luton Literature Directors
Mariana Brown
Founder and director


Mariana set up the CIC in 2019 to deliver a range of initiatives and projects to make books, reading and all forms of creative writing more accessible to all. Having started reading comic books from an early age, she firmly believes if someone can find a style of writing, a character or a storyline that is relatable, or that they can identify with, it can potentially open up thousands of worlds and adventures for any new reader to explore…


Lee Nelson
Co-director of Luton Literature

Lee was invited to get involved pretty early on and was delighted to be asked. He has run workshops and writing groups of all sorts over the last 20 years as well as being one of the founders of the UTTER! Spoken Word organisation that helped to get Spoken-Word established as a distinct strand at the PBH Edinburgh FreeFringe…


Phoebe Heins
Co-director of Luton Literature

Phoebe was super excited to be asked to work with Luton Literature. She has always strived to contribute positively to her local community and is passionate about making books widely accessible to all. Having graduated from the University of Leeds with a degree in Liberal Arts and an Msc degree from the University of Edinburgh in Modern and Contemporary Art: Curation, Criticism and Art History, Phoebe knows the power of books in educating and inspiring both knowledge and growth.