Our Story
Charleston Literary Festival is a boutique literary festival that runs every November for ten days in Charleston, South Carolina. With roots in the Charleston House in the UK—home of the radical writers, artists, and thinkers of the Bloomsbury Group—Charleston Literary Festival is committed to maintaining an international perspective while building up and giving back to the local community on which it is built.
Founded in 2017, we specialize in high-quality Festival events that create perspective-altering conversations with world-renowned authors and thinkers. Charleston Literary Festival’s distinctive international ethos offers attendees the opportunity to engage with renowned authors in unique settings and to contribute to conversations around outstanding books and ideas. The Festival’s programming is carefully curated on the basis of literary and artistic excellence, originality, and critical acclaim.
The Festival has established a reputation for presenting exceptional speakers from diverse backgrounds in intimate venues. Pulitzer, Booker and Nobel prize-winners take the stage for unscripted conversations—then meet and sign books for the audience immediately after the sessions. Speakers and attendees alike return year after year to experience the Festival’s unrivaled hospitality and social events.
Charleston Literary Festival is committed to offering a diverse program of events in terms of speakers and topics, to reaching out to all communities, and to initiatives that widen access to its programs.
An independent 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, previous attendees of the Festival include Brit Bennett, Geraldine Brooks, Tina Brown, Hernan Diaz, Eddie Glaude, Yaa Gyasi, Patrick Radden Keefe, Ian McEwan, Joyce Carol Oates, Imani Perry, George Saunders, Colm Tóibín, and Jeannette Winterson.
Charleston Literary Festival is committed to offering a diverse program of events in terms of speakers and topics, and to reaching out to all communities.