Writers have always traveled, whether the writer be Dante or Cervantes, Samuel Johnson, Jules Verne or Proust. They may walk or run, cycle, row, sail, fly, blast off – or use any one of hundreds of other possible vehicles. Or they may sit quietly, day after day, in a room.

Because they write about the places they have been – whether in memory or in their imagination, they allow the rest of us a way of traveling too, guiding us through regions, galaxies, eras, cultures and states of mind, strange or familiar or some combination of the two.

Collective nouns are among the most vivid words in language. there are exaltations of larks and schools of fish, a pride of lions and a pandemonium of parrots. Why not a Blue Metropolis of writers? Here you will find more trips, more kinds of trips than are dreamed of by the tourist industry. We promise that you will make your own discoveries.

This 10th festival is itself a milestone. We will be catching our breath by the side of the road, looking back over the ground we have covered and surveying the next rise in the road.